RHS News

Royal Historical Society Book and Article Prizes, 2026: submissions now invited

The Royal Historical Society invites applications for its First Book Prize, 2026 and Early Career Article Prize, 2026. The call for submissions opens on Monday 29 September 2025 and runs to Monday 15 December 2025. Applications for each of these prizes may be made via the Society’s application portal:

  • RHS First Book Prize, 2026, for first history monographs published in 2025 by early career historians who received a PhD from a UK or Irish university.
  • RHS Early Career Article Prize, 2026, for history articles / book chapters, published in 2025 by authors who are either current PhD students at, or within three years of having received their doctorate from, a UK or Irish university.

The Society looks to make two awards, in 2026, for the RHS First Book Prize (worth £1,000 per award) and a further two awards for the RHS Early Career Article Prize (each worth £250).

Further information on eligibility and how to submit an application for both prizes is available here: for first monographs and for early career articles.

Submissions for both prizes are by self-nomination by the author via the Society’s applications portal.

The Society expects to award the 2026 prizes in July of next year. The winners of the 2025 awards were as follows:

First Book Prize

Early Career Article Prize

General enquiries about Society’s Prizes should be sent to: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

 

History and Archives in Practice, 2026: Call for participation now open

The call is now open for participants to ‘History and Archives in Practice, 2026’ (HAP26), the annual gathering of historians and archivists, jointly hosted by the Royal Historical Society, Institute of Historical Research and The National Archives.

HAP26 take places in partnership with the University Sheffield Library and will be held on Thursday 16 April 2026 at the University of Sheffield.

The theme for HAP26 is ‘Shaping Societies, Improving Lives: the Impact of Archives and Historical Research’. We’ll explore the relationship between collections, researchers, practice and locality to consider how archives have the potential to initiate change through collaboration and co-production.

We now invite proposals for participation, from historians and archivists, working collaboratively, in a range of formats including papers, panels, workshops and roundtables. Further details of History and Archives in Practice 2026, and how to submit a proposal by the closing date of 31 October 2025 are available here.

Possible subjects for contributions include, but are not limited to:

  • Building relationships: between archives and researchers, and archives and regions
  • Archives, citizenship and the civic good: how do we define, and communicate, the public benefit and public good of archivists’ and historians’ shared use of collections?
  • From collaboration to co-production: what might the transition from collaboration to co-production look like?
  • How are archival projects seeking social change developed and carried through: what experience can current and recent collaborative projects offer us on the fulfilment of work which seeks measurable social and sector-wide change?
  • Campaigning and social change from the archive: in what ways can archival collections, and their interpretation, inform present-day debates and campaigns?
  • Assessing, evaluating and measuring change: what are the measures by which we assess the extent and effectiveness of our work?
  • Archives and impact beyond the local and regional: in what ways can archives affect change beyond regions and address topics of wider societal and national concern?

As in previous years, HAP26 seeks to offer attendees examples of practice, and the lessons from practitioners, from which we can all benefit. We want to showcase recent and current projects and examples in which archivists and historians effect positive change for a defined community or region.

For HAP26 in particular, we will be drawing on the experiences of our partner, the University of Sheffield Library, as well as other archival collections and projects in the region.

 

 

Video and audio recordings of Yasmin Khan’s RHS Lecture now available

Video and audio recordings of Professor Yasmin Khan’s recent RHS Lecture — ‘Mars and Britannia: the British Imperial Way of Warfare’ — are now available.

Yasmin’s lecture, given on 12 September 2025, considered how extensively British military history has relied on non-British people over the past two centuries. This was a global phenomenon and Yasmin provided examples of combatant and non-combatant involvement in conflict regions locations from North Africa to the islands of the Pacific and jungles of East Asia.

Yasmin is Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford where she teaches Global and Imperial history. Her publications include The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (Yale, 2007) and The Raj at War (Bodley Head, 2015).

Watch the lecture

Listen to this lecture

 

Further content in the Society’s Events Archive

Recordings of other Society lectures and events are also available to watch or listen to again. Recordings include recent lectures by, among other speakers:

Many more lectures, and other events, are available from the Society’s Events Archive.

 

Forthcoming Society lectures, October to December 2025

October to December 2025 sees the following Society lectures, taking place in venues across the UK and online:

Further details and booking for each of these lectures is now available from the Events page of the Society’s website.

 

Society visit to historians at the University of Aberdeen, 17-18 September

On 17-18 September, members of the Society’s Council visited historians at the University of Aberdeen: to learn more about the department, and historical studies across the institution; to discuss shared priorities and concerns; and to consider how the Society can best support the work of historians within, with and beyond higher education.

Our focus for the two-day visit was ‘Fostering a Positive Research Culture in Troubled Times’. Panels considered the definition and assessment of research culture; a review of REF2029; history, the humanities and interdisciplinarity; teaching and research in the context of Artificial Intelligence; and academic career progression and the Society’s provision for historians at different career stages. An additional session introduced the work of the Society and its priorities prior to the launch of its new strategy later this year.

The first day closed with a public lecture given by our guest speaker, Professor Matthew J. Smith, Director of the Centre for the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London.

Matthew’s lecture — ‘Twice Removed: Slavery, Big Data, and the Cultures of Caribbean Ancestral Histories’ — explored the limitations of traditional genealogical methods for understanding the complexity of Caribbean kinship structures, and the potential for new digital history projects to trace family history networks connecting 20th-century Jamaicans with African-born forebears transported to the Caribbean. Matthew’s lecture was followed by a reception and chance for Council members to meet Fellows and Members of the Society from the region.

Our great thanks to Matthew for his excellent lecture and to Professors Karin Friedrich and Jackson Armstrong at Aberdeen for organising the visit and their welcome to the university.

Forthcoming Society Visits

The Society’s next visit is to historians at the University of Suffolk and Suffolk Archives, Ipswich, on Wednesday 22 October. This visit will include a public lecture by Professor Tim Grady (Chester) who will speak on ‘Unravelling the Tapestry of Death: Britain and the Memory of the Two World Wars’.

This lecture — which takes place at 5.30pm at The Hold, home to Suffolk Archives — considers the practice of war burial which saw British soldiers buried alongside Americans, French and Belgians who in turn mingled with the graves of enemy servicemen: Germans, Austrians and Italians.

Booking to attend is now open to all and, again, we look forward to welcoming RHS Fellows and Members from the region to the lecture and reception which follows. Visits will be attended by the Society’s President, Professor Lucy Noakes, and members of the RHS Council.

The Society’s 2025 Visits close, on Wednesday 10 December, with a joint meeting with historians at the Institute of Education and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Our public lecture on this occasion is by Dr Heather Ellis (Sheffield) on ‘Hunger, Health and Hope: A History of School Meals in Britain’. Further details of Heather’s lecture (6pm, LSHTM) are available here and booking for this event is also now available.

 

Autumn lectures from the Royal Historical Society

The Society resumed its 2025 events programme on Friday 12 September with a lecture by Professor Yasmin Khan on ‘Mars and Britannia: the Imperial Way of Warfare’. Our thanks to Yasmin for her presentation, recordings of which will be available shortly.

Forthcoming RHS lectures, to December 2025, are now open for booking and take place in Aberdeen and Ipswich (as part of the Society’s visits programme to historians across the UK) and in London, with online access also available

On Wednesday 17 September, we host a sponsored lecture at the University of Aberdeen, by Professor Matthew J. Smith (Director of the Centre for the Legacies of British Slave Ownership at University College London). Matthew’s subject is ‘Twice Removed: Slavery, Big Data, and the Cultures of Caribbean Ancestral Histories’, a study of the impact of digital humanities on the histories of the Caribbean and enslavement, and the growing prominence and importance of Black family history as one outcome of the growing prominence of digitised resources.

Booking for Matthew’s lecture, which takes place at the University of Aberdeen, is now open and we hope to welcome as many RHS Fellows and Members in the region to attend and join us for a reception. The lecture is part of the Society’s visit to historians at the University of Aberdeen on 17-18 September.

Our third autumn lecture also accompanies an RHS Visit, this time to the University of Ipswich at Suffolk. Our guest lecturer on this occasion (Wednesday 22 October) is Professor Tim Grady (University of Chester) who will speak on ‘Unravelling the Tapestry of Death: Britain and the Memory of the Two World Wars’.

This lecture — which takes place at The Hold, home to Suffolk Archives — considers the practice of war burial which saw British soldiers buried alongside Americans, French and Belgians who in turn mingled with the graves of enemy servicemen: Germans, Austrians and Italians.

Booking to attend is now open to all and, again, we look forward to welcoming RHS Fellows and Members from the region to the lecture and reception which follows. Visits will be attended by the Society’s President, Professor Lucy Noakes, and members of the RHS Council.

On Tuesday 4 November, the Society hosts its annual Public History Lecture in association with Gresham College London. Our speaker this year is the journalist and historian, Lord Daniel Finkelstein, who will speak on ‘Minor Criminal: The Trial of the Man Who Murdered My Grandmother’.

The lecture takes place at 6.00pm at Gresham College, Barnard’s Inn Hall, Holborn, London and also online. Online booking for this event is now available. Booking for in-person attendance will open on 5 October.

This year’s RHS Anniversary Lecture is given, at 6pm on Friday 21 November, by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer MRIA, FBA (Trinity College Dublin). Jane’s lecture is entitled ‘Visible | Invisible: Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland’. It presents her current research to recover – via new digital methodologies – the lived experiences of non-elite women in Ireland, between 1550 and 1700, who have largely been ignored by scholars more interested in privileging the stories of men of power and influence.

The 2025 Anniversary Lecture takes place at Mary Ward House, London, WC1H 9SN and online. Booking for in-person and online attendance of this event is now available.

Our final lecture of 2025 takes place, at 6pm on Wednesday 10 December, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London. Our speaker on this occasion is Dr Heather Ellis (University of Sheffield) who will speak on ‘Hunger, Health and Hope: A History of School Meals in Britain’. 

Heather’s lecture explores how policy, practice, and lived experience have shaped school dining across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. At stake is more than what children eat. School meals open a window onto questions of inequality, poverty, community, and the politics of care. By tracing the past and present of school food, the lecture shows how historical perspectives can illuminate contemporary debates about fairness, health, and childhood in Britain.

Heather’s lecture is part of the Society’s joint visit to historians at the Institute of Education, UCL, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on 10 December. Booking is now open.

HEADER IMAGE: iStock, credit: TheMountBirdStudio

 

Yasmin Khan gives latest in the Society’s 2025 lecture series

Our thanks to Professor Yasmin Khan who, on Friday 12 September, gave the next in the Society’s 2025 series of public lectures, held in person at Mary Ward House London and online.

Yasmin’s lecture, entitled ‘Mars and Britannia: the British Imperial Way of Warfare’, considered how extensively British military history has relied on non-British people over the past two centuries. This was a global phenomenon and Yasmin provided examples of combatant and non-combatant involvement in conflict regions locations from North Africa to the islands of the Pacific and jungles of East Asia.

Yasmin is Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford where she teaches Global and Imperial history. Her publications include The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (Yale, 2007) and The Raj at War (Bodley Head, 2015).

Video and audio recordings of the lecture will be available shortly on the Society’s website.

Forthcoming lectures

The Society’s next public lectures, for which booking is now available, take place as part of forthcoming RHS visits to historians across the UK:

5.30pm Wednesday 17 September at the University of Aberdeen, with guest lecturer Professor Matthew J. Smith (UCL): ‘Twice Removed: Slavery, Big Data, and the Cultures of Caribbean Ancestral Histories’.

5.30pm Wednesday 22 October at the University of Suffolk, Ipswich, with guest lecturer Professor Tim Grady (Chester): ‘Unravelling the Tapestry of Death: Britain and the Memory of the Two World Wars’.

Our next London lecture is the Society’s annual Public History Lecture in association with Gresham College London. This year’s lecture, ‘Minor Criminal: The Trial of the Man who Murdered my Grandmother’, will be given by Daniel Finkelstein at Gresham College at 6pm on Tuesday 4 November. Booking to attend online is now open; in-person booking will open on 5 October.

For audio and video recordings of previous Royal Historical Society lectures and events, please see the Events Archive page.

HEADER IMAGE: Edward Stanford. ‘The British Empire at War’ (1916), public domain, University of Illinois Library

 

Society announces its Masters Scholarships recipients for 2025-26

The Royal Historical Society is very pleased to announce the latest recipients of its Masters Scholarships programme, for the academic year 2025-26. RHS Masters Scholarships provide financial support to students from groups currently underrepresented in academic History.

Each Scholarship is worth £5,000. Recipients also receive career guidance and mentoring from members of the RHS Council, along with Postgraduate Membership of the Society for the duration of their course.

In September 2025, the Society announces four recipients of Masters Scholarships for the academic year 2025-26

  • Emily Jones (first degree Warwick) to study for an MA in Modern History at Warwick
  • Ershad Ahaidi (first degree UCL) to study for an MA in Economic History at the LSE
  • Wali Ntumba (first degree Greenwich) to study for an MA in History at UCL
  • Aisling Ward (first degree Goldsmiths) to study for an MRes in Public History at Birkbeck, University of London

The programme, established in 2022, seeks to actively address underrepresentation within the discipline, and enable Black and Asian students, along with those of other minorities, to consider academic research in History.

By supporting Masters students the programme focuses on a key early stage in the academic training of future researchers. With these Scholarships, the Society seeks to support students who are without the financial means to study for a Masters degree in History. By doing so, we hope to improve the educational experience of early career historians engaged in a further degree.

Supporting the Scholarships programme for the academic year 2026-27

In the first four years of the programme, the Society has awarded 22 Scholarships, thanks to the additional support of the Past & Present Society, the Scouloudi Foundation, the Thriplow Charitable Trust, and a generous donor. The RHS seeks to offer as many Scholarships as we can to talented eligible early career historians.

If you or your organisation would like to help support future rounds of this programme, please email president@royalhistsoc.org to discuss options with the Society’s President, Professor Lucy Noakes.

All other enquiries about the programme should be addressed to: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

 

Vacancy: the Society seeks to appoint an Events and Academic Engagement Officer

The Royal Historical Society seeks to appoint an Events and Academic Engagement Officer (0.6 FTE) to join its professional Office based at University College London. The post will help support and develop the Society’s activities with a particular focus on  academic and training events, networking for members of the Society, and scholarly communications.

  • Job Title: Events and Academic Engagement (part-time)
  • Contract: 0.6 FTE (3 days a week). Fixed Term. 12 months in the first instance, with potential for extension to permanent
  • Salary: UCL Non-clinical pay scale: spine point 22, currently £36,433, including London weighting at full time, pro-rated to £21,860 for 0.6 FTE
  • Location: Hybrid – remote and with some attendance in the RHS Office (UCL, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT).
  • Application closing date: 23:59 BST, Sunday 5 October 2025
  • Start Date: As soon as possible after interviews; interviews are expected to take place in week commencing Monday 27 October 2025

Further details of the Events and Academic Engagement Officer role are available here, with applications made via the RHS Jobs Portal.

We seek a highly capable Events and Academic Engagement Officer to support the work of the Society’s professional Office based at University College London.

The Events and Academic Engagement Officer will lead for the RHS Office on the planning, organisation and successful running of all events (lectures, workshops, training, departmental visits and other formats) run by the Society, both in-person and online, working with other members of the Office and the Society’s governing Council.

The post-holder will be the principal contact with partner organisations (including the German Historical Institute, London and Gresham College) with which the Society co-organises annual events. Partnership work includes lead responsibility for the Society for planning, managing and running the annual day conference, ‘History and Archives in Practice’, held in association with The National Archives and Institute of Historical Research.

The role will also lead on the development and management of new events and event formats to emerge from the Society’s current strategy review to take effect from 2026. The post-holder is also expected to play a prominent part in enhancing networking opportunities for the Society’s membership, as confirmed by the current strategic review.

As Academic Engagement Officer, the post-holder will be the first point of contact for selected holders of RHS research funding: overseeing and developing communication of project work for the benefit of the wider historical community.

Academic engagement also involves a principal role in the communication and promotion of the Society’s work, and that of the wider historical profession, via the RHS blog and social media channels—as well as the development of new forms of scholarly networking and communications in line with the Society’s strategic priorities. The Society offers an employer contributor pension of 12% and a friendly, supportive and highly professional working environment.

 

 

Calls for research funding from the Royal Historical Society: current programmes

The Society currently invites applications for the following three schemes — open to historians across a range of career stages and backgrounds — with closing dates from 5 December 2025 onwards. For further information on each programme, eligibility and how to apply please follow the links below.

Closing dates from December 2025

  • Postgraduate Research Support Grants provide funding of either £500 or £1000 to historians to undertake historical research. Activities include visiting archives and historical sites, and travel to academic conferences. These grants are available to members of the Royal Historical Society who are postgraduate students currently undertaking research for a Master’s or PhD degree). Next closing date: Friday 5 December 2025.
  • Early Career Research Support Grants provide funding of either £500 or £1000 to historians to undertake historical research. Activities include visiting archives and historical sites, and travel to academic conferences. These grants are available to members of the Royal Historical Society who are within five years of completion of a PhD in history or a cognate subject. Next closing date: Friday 5 December 2025.
  • David Berry Fellowship in the History of Scotland and the Scottish People provides an annual award of up to £2,500 to undertake research on the history of Scotland and the Scottish people worldwide. This grant is available to members of the Royal Historical Society at any career stage. Next closing date: Friday 6 March 2026.

Applicants for these Royal Historical Society grants must be members of the Society. To find out how to become a Fellow, Associate Fellow, Member or Postgraduate Member, please see our Join Us page.

Details of current holders of Royal Historical Society Fellowships and Grants are available here.

All enquiries about Research Funding should be sent to the Society’s Membership and Programmes Manager at: membership@royalhistsoc.org.

 

HEADER IMAGE: Jacob Marrel, Sheet from a Tulip Book, c.1640, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, public domain.

 

Society awards 2025-26 grants for teaching, book development and doctoral research

The Royal Historical Society has recently awarded the following grants and fellowships for the coming academic year. These schemes form part of the Society’s research funding which annually makes available nearly £150,000 to historians to undertake projects relating to historical scholarship.

Further details of the current calls for funding, and all RHS programmes, are available here.

Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships

First awarded in 2023, Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships provide support for historians to trial new approaches in teaching History in UK Higher Education, or to undertake surveys of current aspects of History teaching. The Fellowships are named for the Dame Jinty Nelson (1942-2024), President of the Society, 2000-04.

Recipients for 2025-26:

  • Jody Crutchley (Liverpool Hope), ‘Using Interactive LED Wall Technology and VR to Teach the History of Settler Colonialism’
  • Jasper Heinzen (York), ‘How to Read Foreign-language Sources in 80 Days: Helping Students Get the Most out of Translation Software’
  • Jason Lee (De Montfort), ‘Teaching tool to address the historical dimension of conspiracy theories, using MOOCS’
  • Marion Loeffler (Cardiff) ‘Digital Training Day for Doctoral Students’

It is hoped that Fellowship projects will prove instructive to fellow historians, with elements that may be incorporated into their own teaching. Examples of recent Teaching Fellowships are available on the RHS blog and as articles in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

Funded Book Workshops

First awarded in 2023, Funded Book Workshop Grants provide support for authors currently writing a second or third monograph to hold a day workshop with six invited readers to discuss a draft manuscript.

Recipients for 2025-26:

  • Rachel Bright (Keele) for her project ‘Becoming British? A digital history of women’s migration and naturalisation in early twentieth century Australia’ (Manchester University Press)
  • Mark Williams (Cardiff) for his project ‘The Uneasy World: A Cultural History of the East India Company, 1600-1757’ (Princeton University Press)

Centenary Fellowships for Doctoral Students

Held for six months, jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, the RHS Centenary Fellowships enable historians to complete their PhDs and receive research training.

Recipients for 2025-26:

  • Angelina Andreeva (Lancaster) for her PhD project, ‘Mapping Lives: Ego Documents and Urban Experiences in London c. 1650-1690’
  • Joel Mead (Liverpool) for his PhD project, ‘Breaking and Remaking the British Egg: Intersections of Class, Health, Gender and Animal Welfare, 1941-1999’