Could you be our Chair?

The Social History Society has started the search for a new Chair, who will take over when Professor Pam Cox steps down from the role in summer 2019. Professor Cox has chaired the Society for the past three years, leading it through its fortieth anniversary year and beyond. She has made a significant contribution to the … Continued

Love Lost and Found

Love stories from the early 20th Century to the late 1960s will be celebrated at the Fitzrovia Chapel this Valentine’s Day, as part of an ambitious international project to reunite them with their families and descendants. The February exhibition called Love Lost and Found features exquisite original wedding photographs from the popular Vintage Wedding Photos … Continued

Mapping Britain on Film

The BFI has launched a new crowdsourcing platform as part of its ‘Britain on Film’ project. The platform allows people to share their unique knowledge by ‘pinning’ locations to the online map. The project aims to improve the accuracy and depth of the geo-tagging of films within the Britain on Film national collection. In doing so, … Continued

Foundling Archive Focus Group

The children’s charity Coram is looking for participants for a focus group on the use of digital archives. The charity was recently awarded HLF development funding for a project – Voices Through Time: The Story of Care – which aims to digitise the Foundling Hospital archive. It is determined to make the resource accessible, appealing … Continued

Congratulations to David Olusoga

It has been announced that David Olusoga is to join the University of Manchester as Professor of Public History. The historian, broadcaster and film-maker studied history at the University of Liverpool and began his career as a television producer. Since moving in front of the camera, he has emerged as one of the UK’s foremost … Continued

Research using Social Care Records

Professor Pam Cox has been invited to speak about research using social care records at a symposium at The National Archives on 6 February. The symposium will bring together researchers from varied disciplines (including history, social work and information studies) to explore research with social care records. Professor Cox and other speakers will share their … Continued

Olivette Otele Confirmed as Keynote Speaker

We are delighted to confirm that Professor Olivette Otele (Bath Spa University) will be the keynote speaker at the 2019 Social History Society conference. Our annual conference is the largest gathering of social and cultural historians in the UK.  Over the last four decades, it has provided a space for our members to explore the many ways in … Continued

New Editor for Cultural and Social History

The Social History Society is pleased to announce that Dr Brodie Waddell will be joining the editorial board of Cultural and Social History in January 2019. He will join Dr Vandana Joshi, Professor David Nash, and the Reviews Editor Dr Kelly Boyd. Professor Barry Doyle is stepping down after a successful term on the Board. … Continued

SHS response to threatened closure of Black Cultural Archives

You may have heard news of the funding threat facing the Black Cultural Archives: https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/black-cultural-archives-funding-letter-a3978136.html   We would like to join with other organisations in showing our support for the Black Cultural Archives as an integral asset in our national teaching and research infrastructures and as the only national heritage centre devoted to preserving the histories … Continued

Congratulations Professor Otele

History, as an academic discipline, has a problem with its lack of diversity. This is a real issue for a field of scholarly activity where seeking to understand the world as it appears from very different perspectives underpins much of what we do.

As Meleisa Ono-George noted in the plenary session of our recent conference (which you can watch here), amongst the 6.1% BME academic staff in UK university History departments there are only 15 black historians. Until this month, there was no black and female History Professor in the country.

That changed when Dr Olivette Otele was promoted from Reader to Professor at Bath Spa University…