What makes for a hit song? In this post Christopher Marsh introduces the '100 Ballads' project, a study of the most successful broadside ballads of seventeenth-century England. '100 Ballads' was released online earlier this year. It brings together historians and players of early modern music to research and perform the most popular songs of the time. As well as a history of popular music, performance and publishing, 100 Ballads offers insight into the concerns of everyday life. The songs bring us stories of romance, comedy and tragedy, of value to historians of early modern politics society a ..read more

Earlier this month, REF2029 announced a consultation relating to its Open Access Policy. The policy sets out the open access requirements for eligible publications. The 2029 policy extends the scope to include 'longform publications' in the form of monographs, edited collections, book chapters and scholarly editions. The inclusion of longform publications in REF2029 is a major development, of particular importance for humanities disciplines including history. This post provides a summary of the key points of the REF2029 open access policy and initial concerns and questions which the Society wi ..read more

Digital communications are central to how we communicate, debate, teach and assess understanding of the past. In this post, David Geiringer goes back to one of the earliest, and most resilient, of these formats—the blog—to consider its development, use and relevance for historians. Originally championed for taking the communication of historical research beyond mainstream publishing and the academy, blogs are now integral to higher education assessment and practice. With blogs mainstream, it's time to consider how much of their original, disruptive capacity—in terms of content, format and ..read more

How can we 'decolonise the curriculum' when it comes to the history of the Soviet Union? How do we decentralise our historical approach to former-Soviet states? In this post Natalya Chernyshova discusses the importance of these questions for modern historians of this region. Natalya highlights missing links in research on former-Soviet states, and the ways in which this topic may be taught in future, with reference to Belarus and Ukraine. Particularly, she identifies the need to translate primary sources and create dedicated modules on this topic - two projects on which she has recently b ..read more

In this post we hear from Lucy Noakes, Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and—from January 2024—President-Elect of the Royal Historical Society. A specialist in the history of modern Britain, Lucy researches the experience and memory of those who have lived through conflict. How history is remembered and retold is central to identity and to how—as individuals, communities and nations—we respond to societal change or topics of public debate. Here, Lucy considers her longstanding interest in the relationship between past and present, and the role of the Society in ..read more

Historians working in UK Higher Education will be very familiar with the ‘REF’ or Research Excellence Framework. Work is now underway for ‘REF 2029’, led by a team reporting to the four UK Higher Education funding bodies. With it come a number of changes to the means and structure of assessment. As a result, the next REF will differ in important ways from that held in 2021. In this post Barbara Bombi and Jonathan Morris – current and former chairs of the Society’s Research Policy Committee – outline those areas of REF 2029 design currently open to review, and summarise the RHS response to a ma ..read more

On 28 October 2023, the British Library was subject to a major cyberattack, entailing a near complete shutdown of the Library's web-based services. Staff at the British Library are continuing to work extremely hard to restore services. As this continues, a number of organisations are offering guidance on short-term alternatives and workarounds while BL databases remain unavailable for research or teaching across the UK and overseas. This post provides a summary of these alternatives and a selection of guides now available, with a special focus on those working historically. We also invite furt ..read more

RHS Workshop Grants support meetings of historians to undertake a wide range of projects, from research, to debate, programme planning and networking. The first round of RHS Workshops took place in 2023. They include a day event recently hosted by the Early Modern Migration Reading Group on the subject of 'Beyond the "Good"/"Bad" Migrant Dichotomy: Ways Forward for Early Modern and Contemporary History'. In this post, the organisers of this Workshop -- Kathleen Commons, Dan Rafiqi, Juliet Atkinson, and Samantha Sint Nicolaas -- reflect on their project ..read more

What was daily life like for old people in Russian villages at the turn of the twentieth century? In this post, Sarah Badcock (University of Nottingham) considers the lives of non-able elderly people in late Imperial Russia; drawing on accounts of real lives and representations of old age in art and literature. This post introduces and accompanies Sarah's research article, 'Waiting to Die? Old Age in the Late Imperial Russian Village', which was recently published Open Access on FirstView for 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ..read more

The purpose of statues in public spaces has recently become a matter of controversy. In this post, Pippa Catterall considers how and when a statue may be read as appropriately situated in public space, and when and how it is not. Appropriateness is primarily determined by the ways in which public authorities authorise the use of public space. Yet understanding of the fit between a statue and public space varies over time, and may be deliberately subverted. This placing of statues in ‘a state of surrealism’ also goes beyond relocation ..read more