In a busy, difficult, challenging and transformatory year for us all, here’s a look back at selected activities during 2020 from the IHR. Throughout the year, and especially since March, we’ve sought to support historians of all kinds as best we can. In doing so we’ve benefited greatly from the expertise and generosity of IHR staff, fellows, associates, members and supporters.
- January: launches of the IHR’s Strategy & Mission, 2020-25 and of the Victoria County History’s app, ‘A History of English Places’.
- February: publication of the first of 10 IHR books to come out this year (including VCH Red Books and VCH Short titles).
- March: the annual Aylmer Conference for archivists and historians, this year on ‘Co-production and collaboration in the archive’ (with The National Archives and Royal Historical Society)—our final ‘in-person’ event before the first lockdown. From late March, hundreds of IHR events and seminars moved online.
- April: ‘Setting the Record Straight’ – launch of our research internship scheme between the IHR’s Centre for the History of People, Place and Community and the Museum of Youth Culture.
- May: creation by the IHR Library of online research resources to help MA and PhD students facing archive and library closures: a free listing of 750 sources of primary and secondary content.
- June: launch of our online Events archive, featuring content since 2018 and Zoom events from 2020.
- July: the IHR’s annual Historical Research lecture on ‘Writing histories of 2020: first responses and early perspectives’. A full Open Access text version of the lecture—by Professors Richard Vinen, Claire Langhamer and Kevin Siena—was published in the IHR journal, Historical Research, for November.
- August: creation by Library staff of the ‘Teaching British histories of race, migration and empire’ web resource, in association with the Runnymede Trust: 100+ online free resources for teaching and research in schools and higher education.
- September: release of a free ‘resource pack’ for online teaching, 2020-21, from the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH): 8 short videos on using BBIH from undergraduates to PhD. In three updates this year, BBIH editors have also created and published records of 12,500 new history publications principally from 2019-20.
- October: launch of the IHR MOOC (Massive Open Online Course): ‘Applied Public History: places, people, stories’, led by staff at the Centre for the History of People, Place and Community.
- November: announcement of the IHR Partnership Seminars for 2021-22: 10 new online, international seminar series addressing key disciplinary themes. The first of the seminars begins on 12 January 2021: a full listing available soon.
- December: third and final stage of the 2020 project to add and link records of 30,000 History PhD theses (1901-2014) to British History Online. December also sees publication of 75th review this year via the IHR’s free Reviews in History service.
- January 2021: announcement of the IHR’s Centenary Year—a programme of events and activities to mark the creation of the Institute on 8 July 1921 and the IHR role in the future of history in the 2020s and beyond. More details next month …