What can the radical tradition of costume & performance at Notting Hill Carnival tell us about a decolonised approach to the teaching of history? Ife Thompson on the People's War Carnival Band
How does in-access to archives provide opportunities to ask alternative questions about the past? Elisabeth Leake reflects on how personal and professional circumstances ultimately shape the histories we produce.
What does 'history from below' looking like in the Philippines? In this piece Justin Umali reflects on communities finding their "historical place" in a narrative.
How can we creatively utilize historical research to bring the past to life? Josh Allen discusses the importance of using archival sources, oral histories and material culture in a creative fashion to bring myth, metaphor and anecdote back…
Family history is in robust health, after years in the scholarly wilderness. Sophie Scott-Brown looks at new horizons for this rich seam of history, colliding private with public and biology with culture in provocative ways
Oral history creates a rich world of storytelling around any type of collection. Its methods can also shape a museum’s relationships and core identity.
Writing the history of IVF means linking the intimate experiences of conception, gestation, and parturition with global and transnational processes. Vera Mackie, Sarah Ferber, and Nicola J. Marks explore.
Creative writing is not a conventional primary source for historians of eastern Africa. However, examining marginalised actors’ histories can be invaluable in filling the gaps left by traditional archives.
Can personal photographs become a means to conduct oral histories? Josh Allen explores how the Living Memory Project's methods expand the power of the photograph as a source.
Should Friedrich Engels be reappraised as a radical historian for our times? To mark #Engels200, the bicentenary of Engels' birth, Christian Høgsbjerg assesses the revolution in historiography that he helped to foment.
Writing History in a Drought Year.
"I want very much to write history that matters. But it should only matter for a little while:"
Editorial Fellow @menysnoweballes brings our #WritingRadically series to a close.
In commissioning this feature, editorial fellow Rachel Moss asked contributors: how can we radically re-imagine the writing of history? Over the next few weeks, our contributors reply with creative new methods, sources and forms that they…
The gatekeepers of history have tended to take few risks. Julia Laite argues for a less certain, more quantum kind of history in the latest in our #WritingRadically series.
What challenges do we face in narrating living memory as history, asks Helen Kingstone, and how can oral history challenge linear stories and foster intergenerational generational exchange.
How has the recent passing of the historian Bernard Bailyn become a new weapon for conservatives attacking critically engaged approaches to history? Asheesh Siddique explores.
A speculative methodology can also be a deeply political response to the conventions of archival research, argues Sonja Boon in our Writing Radically series.
"You don’t know what you had until you lost it": at a time when few of us can travel far, Catherine Fletcher asks what role travel plays in the historical process.
How can the history of the response to the 2009-10 swine flu epidemic illuminate the British government's response to the COVID crisis? Virginia Berridge explores.
