On History
News, articles & research from the
Institute of Historical Research
Latest posts
Why Not Let the Leaning Tower of Pisa Collapse?
By Daniel Snowman This is the first in a series of three blog pieces by IHR Senior Fellow, Daniel Snowman, raising provocative issues about how we regard and memorialise what we think of as 'history'. These will be published monthly. We all seek what we think of as...
The Changing Relevance of Empire
In this article Professor Trevor Burnard, a section editor for Empire to 1783 at the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH), Wilberforce Professor of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull, and Director of the Wilberforce Institute reflects on...
Toppling Colston: decolonisation of our own practice
By Mark McCarthy Through the months of lockdown, our Student Group Zoom meetings often discussed how historical research intersects with contemporary life. A broad historical 'turn', the rethinking of our European colonial heritage, was foregrounded in June 2020 when...
Spotlight
Conflict and climate change in the Arctic: what the seventeenth century suggests about the future
By Dagomar Degroot Environment & History, essay no. 13 In the final article of our ‘Environment & History’ series, Professor Dagomar Degroot looks to early modern climate change to ask whether arctic warming necessarily results in violent...
Features & Articles
The Gough Map Project: A Tale of Two Maps
By William D. Shannon The Gough Map Project has reached that ‘interesting’ stage where we are moving from either sitting on the fence and making no decisions, or making lots, but then rejecting them all. It is now time to reach some firm conclusions, and start...
The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH): Recovering Emotions in Historical Research
As historians we are often trained to remove emotions from our analyses of the past, whether this be our own emotions or those of the individuals whose lives and experiences we seek to recover. As a researcher whose work centres on the history of emotions, that...
Public History in Action: VCH Wiltshire and the Bremhill Parish History Project
John Chandler Between Chippenham and Calne, not quite the Marlborough Downs, not quite the flat Wiltshire claylands, lies Bremhill, a large parish of scattered hamlets and farms, connected by a network of minor lanes. It has its quirks – a kind of Nelson’s column...
At home in history: Claire Langhamer on her first months as IHR Director
By Claire Langhamer I started my role as Director of the IHR in October, and already the Institute feels like home. As a historian of twentieth century Britain, there is something particularly lovely about working in Senate House, with its wartime history, its 1930s...
Publications News
New from the Victoria County History: Launching Tamworth
The Victoria County History (VCH) is well known for its detailed studies of individual localities, which assemble (in the words of one recent reviewer) 'countless tiny parts to build a much larger whole'. The 'Big Red Books' describing the histories of places large...
New from the Victoria County History of Oxfordshire: The South Oxfordshire Chilterns: Caversham, Goring, and Area
The Victoria County History (VCH) is well known for its detailed studies of individual localities, which assemble (in the words of one recent reviewer) 'countless tiny parts to build a much larger whole'. This latest volume in the VCH Oxfordshire series turns the...
Public History in Action: VCH Wiltshire and the Bremhill Parish History Project
John Chandler Between Chippenham and Calne, not quite the Marlborough Downs, not quite the flat Wiltshire claylands, lies Bremhill, a large parish of scattered hamlets and farms, connected by a network of minor lanes. It has its quirks – a kind of Nelson’s column...
The Evil May Day riot of 1517 and the European Union elections of 2014: Writing about the history of anti-immigrant politics
Brodie Waddell’s latest article The Evil May Day riot of 1517 and the popular politics of anti-immigrant hostility in early modern London is published in the latest issue of Historical Research. Here Brodie explains the development of that research. In the Spring of...
Research & Resources News
The Changing Relevance of Empire
In this article Professor Trevor Burnard, a section editor for Empire to 1783 at the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH), Wilberforce Professor of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull, and Director of the Wilberforce Institute reflects on...
Bibliography of British and Irish History: February 2022 update
What’s new in BBIH? The February 2022 update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History adds 1648 new publications. The new content includes books, journal articles, book chapters and edited collections covering all areas of British and Irish history, from 55...
The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH): Recovering Emotions in Historical Research
As historians we are often trained to remove emotions from our analyses of the past, whether this be our own emotions or those of the individuals whose lives and experiences we seek to recover. As a researcher whose work centres on the history of emotions, that...
Public History in Action: VCH Wiltshire and the Bremhill Parish History Project
John Chandler Between Chippenham and Calne, not quite the Marlborough Downs, not quite the flat Wiltshire claylands, lies Bremhill, a large parish of scattered hamlets and farms, connected by a network of minor lanes. It has its quirks – a kind of Nelson’s column...