On History
News, articles & research from the
Institute of Historical Research
Latest posts
New MA History Place and Community
Our new MA History Place and Community, launching autumn 2023, will be taught by our expert academic colleagues, alongside guests from other sectors and professional contexts. What are our own IHR / University of London tutors most looking forward to? We asked them to...
BBIH February 2023 update
What’s new in BBIH? The February 2023 update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History adds 3145 new publications. The new update includes books, journal articles, book chapters and edited collections covering all areas of British and Irish history, from 55...
Meet Dr Tristan Griffin, new BBIH section editor for Empire and Commonwealth to 1783
In this blog post we meet Tristan Griffin, recently appointed as the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) section editor for Empire and Commonwealth, prior to 1783. My name is Tristan Griffin, in 2021 I graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of...
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
Bringing the VCH Past to Wikipedia Present
In this blog, VCH General Editor, Adam Chapman and IHR Collections Librarian, Michael Townsend, introduce the VCH Archive and how it is being used to broaden other projects (including Wikipedia). As you might imagine, like any 123-year-old organisation, The...
VCH Outstanding Contribution Awards 2022
On 12 October, 2022, we were delighted to make our inaugural round of VCH Outstanding Contribution Awards, nominated by the VCH community. They’re a chance for us to thank colleagues for their exceptional work on this national local history project, and to share...
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...
Research & Resources News
BBIH February 2023 update
What’s new in BBIH? The February 2023 update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History adds 3145 new publications. The new update includes books, journal articles, book chapters and edited collections covering all areas of British and Irish history, from 55...
Meet Dr Tristan Griffin, new BBIH section editor for Empire and Commonwealth to 1783
In this blog post we meet Tristan Griffin, recently appointed as the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) section editor for Empire and Commonwealth, prior to 1783. My name is Tristan Griffin, in 2021 I graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of...
Meet Dr Ben Guy, new BBIH section editor for Medieval Wales
In this blog post, Dr Ben Guy reflects on his recent appointment as the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) section editor for medieval Wales, drawing attention to the importance of the BBIH for providing coherence to the historical subject of ‘Medieval...
Call for Section Editor: Ireland before 1640, Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH)
The Bibliography of British and Irish History seeks to appoint one new Section Editor with research and/or teaching expertise in the following areas: Ireland before 1640 Section Editors play a vital role in the Bibliography’s editorial process. They...