In this blog post, Ruth Slatter (from the IHR’s Centre for the History of People, Place and Community) and Iain Robertson (from the University of Highlands and Islands’ Centre for History) reflect on the Place-Based Public and Community History Workshop they organised for historians of various backgrounds in April 2025.
Since 2023, the IHR’s Centre for the History of People, Place and Community (CHPPC) and the University of Highlands and Islands’ Centre for History (CfH) have been collaboratively researching ‘public history’ in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and the extent to which it is distinctive and particular to this region. As well as identifying aspects of good ‘public history’ practice, they have also been talking to historians working outside of academia to reflect on how insights from the CfH’s practices could be influenced by and/or transferred to other public history contexts.
This research has involved a series of interviews with historians working for the CfH, museums and archives employees, and community group volunteers from across the Highlands and Islands region. The first round of these interviews were conducted by the fantastic IHR funded intern Juliette Desportes, who reflected on her initial findings in a blog post here. Since then, the project has received further funding from the Strathmartine Trust, which has allowed the team to transcribe Juliette’s interviews, conduct further interviews, and organise a cross-sector workshop to share findings and receive feedback on their research.
This workshop took place at the University of Newcastle in late April 2025. Present were historians from the IHR’s CHPPC, the University of Highlands and Islands’ CfH, University of Newcastle, the Victoria County History (VCH) national network, and public-history organisations from England and Scotland. Everyone attending was united by a commitment to the importance of enabling historical research to be done by and be available to everyone who is interested in the past. And the key topic of conversation was how historians based in higher education, the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), community groups, and beyond can effectively work together to make and share history for all.
The day began by sharing findings from the CfH and CHPPC’s collaborative research into public and community history in the Highlands and Islands. Juliette provided an overview of the research methodologies used before Iain and Ruth shared some initial findings (collaboratively identified by the project’s wider research team). These included:
- Reflections on the language of ‘public’ and ‘community’ history; particularly the way in which ‘public history’ is often a term specifically used within the context of higher education and is rarely used or understood by colleagues working in the GLAM sector, or community groups.
- Consideration of the challenges that all interviewees identified when trying to engage in collaborative cross-sector historical research. These included: time, institutional priorities, money, and cultural and physical geographical particularities.
- Celebration of the ways in which participants had worked to overcome these challenges. This included emphasis on the importance of long-term, personal relationships; effective communication; and a clear, shared understanding of what different partners can contribute to cross-section collaborative research.
Following these presentations, much discussion emerged around the extent to which the challenges associated with public and community history in the Highlands and Islands are specifically the result of the region’s particular physical and cultural geographies. What became clear was that the region does have specific cultural practices, cultural histories, and landscape features that make public and community history more difficult. All present were unanimous, however, that for any cross-sector, public-facing historical project to be successful, attention must be paid to the cultural identities and histories of communities located in their specific places.
Later in the day, conversations begun in the morning were expanded by introductions to various examples of public history projects in England and Scotland. Louise Ryland-Epton and Sarah Rose from the VCH’s national network talked about their public history practices in Wiltshire and Cumbria. These included community-led local history projects and the large-scale recruitment and training of local volunteers to research and write about local places. Philippa Woodcock also shared her involvement in the University of St Andrew’s Sacred Landscapes project, specifically her interviews with communities in Church of Scotland churches earmarked for closure, to develop a community-led framework for recording and preserving these buildings’ and communities’ histories.
The workshop concluded with a hands-on session, where participants shared challenges they were facing in their cross-sector collaborative research and other members of the group used their own experience to suggest solutions or alternative practices.
All members of the CfH/CHPPC research team were hugely grateful for the feedback they received on their research during the workshop and are looking forward to feeding these insights into the article they are currently working on based on their research.
Ruth Slatter is Lecturer in Historic Environment and Knowledge Exchange Manager at the Institute of Historical Research. Iain Robertson is Associate Professor of Historical Geography at the University of the Highlands and Islands’ Centre for History.