Upcoming Events

Historians across Boundaries with the Institute of Historical Research (IHR)

We are excited to announce a series of interactive seminars, designed to help bring researchers interested in the past together, whatever their backgrounds or particular research focus. We want to share best practice and work out how we can encourage greater collaboration.

As part of this series (in order to help you share your thoughts and continue the chat outside of the seminar sessions), we’ll be conducting regular twitter hours on a Wednesday at 8pm. Look for #HistoryHour or follow us on Twitter @HistCollab.

To sign up to the seminar sessions, please visit the IHR page by clicking the button below.

Previous Events...

Family History Workshops

Organised by Julia Laite (Birkbeck, University of London) in partnership with the Raphael Samuel History Centre and Historians Collaborate. These workshops were generously funded by the British Academy. Now available to watch at your leisure.

A BIG thank you to our funders the British Academy for making these workshops possible! Content inspired by previous workshops (Ethics and Criminals) will be available soon.

Telling Small Stories, Telling Big Stories Event

We will explore:

  • How historians (of all types) might better collaborate through family history
  • The ethical, methodological and political challenges of family history
  • How family history can change the way we think about our history and our present
  • How we might go about placing family histories in broader historical and political contexts and
  • How family history and genealogy might help more ‘traditional’ historians understand their subjects

16th June 2021

Times provided in British Summer Time (BST)

10.30-10.45 Welcome and Introductions with Julia Laite

10.45-12.00 With Family History at the Heart: academic research informed by genealogy

Zehra Miah – I’m Just a Historian: family history to academic history (and back)

Jean Smith – The personal is historical: Mental illness in academic and family history research

Sophie Michell – Reconstituting Community: Genealogy and Microhistory

Abigail Broomfield – Family Archaeology and long-lost connections

12.00 – 2.00 Break

2.00 – 3.30 Putting the (hi)story in: New Ways of Working with genealogical sources and Family History

Natalie Pithers – A Drop in the Ocean of Janes: The importance of Storytelling in family history

Alison Baxter – Family history, creative writing and difficult issues

Suus Van der Berg – Striking a balance: family history, queer history and ethics

Nadine Attewell – Family history, community history and challenging historical narratives

13.30 – 6.00 Break

6.00 – 7.30 RAPHAEL SAMUEL MEMORIAL LECTURE

Hazel Carby on Imperial Sexual Economies

Drawn from Hazel Carby’s new book Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands the lecture will examine the workings of patriarchal, racialized and gendered power through the entangled lives of free women of colour and enslaved women on a Jamaican coffee plantation.

17th June 2021

10.00-11.00 The missing, the difficult, the hidden: myth, memory and other challenges of family history

Kate Bagnall – Collaborating in Family History: Challenges and Rewards

Alison Pedley – Who owns these stories? Difficult histories in family and academic history

Keira Gomez – Misremembering and Personal Truth: trauma and healing in family history

Rebecca Wynter – Sharing Histories: Families and the 1903 Colney Hatch Disaster

11.30 – 11.45 Break

11.45 – 12.30 KEYNOTE

Katie Donington – The bonds of family: Slavery, commerce and culture in the British Atlantic world

12.30 – 2.00 Break

2.00 – 3.30 Access, resources, communication and collaboration

Simon Fowler – ‘Untying both hands’: encouraging the use of online historical resources for both academics and genealogists

Elise Bath – Family histories, tracing services and the holocaust

Mary McKee – Behind the scenes: digitization and records at Find My Past

Ruth Beecher – Oral histories across generations

Joanne Begiato – The Inheriting the Family Project

3.30 – 3.50 Break and informal breakout room networking

3.50 – 4.05 Alison Light – Closing Reflections

4.05 – 4.15 Julia Laite, Closing remarks and future plans