On History
News, articles & research from the
Institute of Historical Research
Latest posts
Should we concrete over ‘dark tourist’ monuments?
By Daniel Snowman, Senior Fellow, IHR This is the final 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'. Read the first and second blogs here and here....
Call for Section Editors: Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH)
The Bibliography of British and Irish History seeks to appoint three new Section Editors with research and/or teaching expertise in the following areas: Scotland Britain, 1914-1960 Britain, 1961-present Section Editors play a vital role in the Bibliography’s...
Get ready for the new academic year with the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH)
This post was written by Jenny Lelkes-Rarugal, Editor for the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH). The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is the largest and most comprehensive tool available for studying, teaching, and researching...
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
Supporting Early-Career Historians: The Victoria County History
This post was written by Adam Chapman, the General Editor of the Victoria County History, and Lecturer in Medieval History at the Institute of Historical Research.[Working for the VCH] sparked my long-forgotten childhood curiosity around the history of place, what...
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...
Research & Resources News
Call for Section Editors: Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH)
The Bibliography of British and Irish History seeks to appoint three new Section Editors with research and/or teaching expertise in the following areas: Scotland Britain, 1914-1960 Britain, 1961-present Section Editors play a vital role in the Bibliography’s...
Get ready for the new academic year with the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH)
This post was written by Jenny Lelkes-Rarugal, Editor for the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH). The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is the largest and most comprehensive tool available for studying, teaching, and researching...
The Bibliography of British and Irish History goes online: 20-year anniversary
This post was written by Jenny Lelkes-Rarugal, Editor for the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH). July 2022 marks the 20th anniversary of the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) being published as an online database. This article will...
Bibliography of British and Irish History: June 2022 update
What’s new in BBIH? The June 2022 update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History adds 2610 new publications. The new content includes books, journal articles, book chapters and edited collections covering all areas of British and Irish history, from 55...