Advocating for History by Doing History

This blog was written by Claire Langhamer, Director of the IHR

Historians are very good at crafting arguments and in recent times very many people have advanced very many arguments about why history matters. We have pointed to the skills of critical analysis that lie at the heart of our training. We have drawn attention to the ability of historians to sift information and to weigh the status of evidence. We have explained that temporal literacy prepares us for the future; that knowing that things have not always been thus helps us understand the specificity of the now. And we have told people about the life-long enrichment that an engagement with the past for its own sake can offer. 

For us these are fundamentals; and in the current climate of fake news, rampant authoritarianism, and AI-gone-rogue, they are skills made for these times. This really should be our moment. And yet despite, or perhaps because of, the match between our skill set and current challenges, our discipline is under attack, and our jobs are being cut. Many historians have never had the luxury of anything like a permanent academic post. To call it a crisis is no exaggeration, though of course it is a crisis that is differently felt in different places and by different people. It is, fundamentally, a crisis within a crisis, within a crisis, and it is easy to feel a bit helpless and hopeless about it. What can we do if our arguments aren’t landing and politicians aren’t listening?

In thinking about the challenges that we face as historians today we encounter a paradox. People really love history. They love watching it on film and TV, they love engaging with it in museums, they love doing it themselves. Popular history publishing is flourishing; history podcasts are everywhere; some historians are household names. There was even a historian on the UK’s Celebrity Traitors television show. And it’s not all Tudors and Nazis and the Second World War; people love diverse types of history and embrace different historical practices. There is a lot of creative, imaginative, and methodologically adventurous history going on well beyond the university sector, as there always has been. The desire to encounter the past, and to understand its people, is deepening not dissipating. We need to mobilise this enthusiasm to defend the important historical work that goes on within universities as well as beyond them.

One way of advocating for the discipline then is to build ever more bridges between history ‘out there’ and history ‘in here’. Without the scholarship that happens in universities, history ‘out there’ loses its underpinnings and points of reference. Such bridges already exist—we only need to look at the historical development of queer history and Black history to see the deep temporal roots of community-driven knowledge. And there is a very long history of women historians finding a space within extra-university organisations like the Victoria County History or in adult education. What we perhaps need to do a little more often right now is to explain the circular and mutually reinforcing relationship between these different types of history-making; to underline that the thing we do in one place explicitly supports the thing we do in another.

The IHR sees advocacy as on-the-ground alliance building where we promote the value of history through the experience of doing it together. Too often when we talk about advocacy, we talk about it as a top-level activity—of getting in a room with politicians and policy-makers or talking with journalists. This is vital work, but it is only one of many ways of advocating for the discipline. Many of us have backgrounds in radical forms of history-making; or are driven to do history because we believe historical knowledge, understanding, and practice are social goods. Supporting each other to mobilise these approaches for advocacy might help to build a stronger coalition of the history-curious. 

What else can we do?

History organisations have a responsibility to do as much as we possibly can, and to work collaboratively with each other, to support history. At the IHR we have just launched a new series of Applied History Fellowships designed to help recent PHD students get experience of applying their skills in different parts of the varied history eco-system. We are doing this with a range of partners including the Royal Historical Society, DC Thomson (publishers of The Social History Archive), History & Policy, and the IHR Trust. This is tricky work—we need to be pragmatic whilst continuing to believe in the value of research for its own sake. But by demonstrating the utility of historical skills we advocate for the discipline.

What else? We have opened up our non-stipendiary Fellowships to those who are in between jobs, or working in other sectors, but who need a history home. These researchers are also history advocates. As this group expands, those within it need institutional attachments to access the basic building blocks of our work—articles, monographs, and other increasingly online-only library resources. Money also matters of course and we are fundraising to provide more bursaries to help fill the gaps that are emerging within the history infrastructure. And these gaps really are widening. We need to do more. Our new strategy is rooted in a commitment to openness, engagement, collaboration, and advocacy. It is called Making History Together. 

We need to act as individual advocates too. For those of us who have had the extraordinary gift of a lifetime in history now is the time to pay it forward. Support organisations that advocate for the discipline and which support historians. You can donate to the IHR’s annual fund. You can support the Royal Historical Society.  You can support community history groups, local archives, museums, libraries, and all the bits of infrastructure that collectively make history. Some of us might feel able to make financial contributions whilst others of us might offer time and labour. Those of us in need of help should be encouraged and feel empowered to ask for it.  And at a time when equality, diversity, and inclusion is in real danger across multiple countries, let’s find sustainable ways of keeping the diversity of history as both a subject and a profession alive.

Claire Langhamer, Director of the IHR

November 2025

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