Professor Lucy Noakes\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/files.royalhistsoc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/27173613\/Screenshot-2024-11-27-at-17.35.36-240x160.png\")
Lucy Noakes is Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and a social and cultural historian of early to mid 20th-century Britain.<\/p>\n
As a specialist in the history of modern Britain, Lucy researches the experience and memory of those who have lived through conflict, with a particular focus on the First and Second World Wars. Her recent monographs include\u00a0Dying for the Nation. Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain<\/em>\u00a0(2020) and\u00a0War and the British: Gender, Memory and National Identity 1939-1991<\/em> (revised edition 2023). Her latest book, The People’s Victory: VE Day Through the Eyes of Those Who Were There<\/em>, will be published in May 2025. Lucy\u2019s work has made extensive use of the Mass Observation Archive, of which she is now a trustee.<\/p>\n Before joining the University of Essex in 2017, Lucy Noakes held academic posts at the universities of Southampton Solent, Portsmouth and Brighton.<\/p>\n Lucy is the 36th President of the Royal Historical Society and took up her role in November 2024.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Professor Clare Griffiths\t\t Clare Griffiths is Head of History and Professor of Modern History in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University. In November 2023 she was appointed Vice President of the Royal Historical Society.<\/p>\n Prior to taking up her current position in Cardiff, she taught at the University of Sheffield, Wadham College, Oxford, and the University of Reading, and she has held visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Museum of English Rural Life.<\/p>\n Clare\u2019s research focuses on the political and cultural history of Britain in the twentieth century, with a particular interest in the history of the countryside, agriculture and landscape. She is the author of\u00a0Labour and the Countryside: the Politics of Rural Britain, 1918-1939<\/i>\u00a0(Oxford University Press, 2007) and co-editor of\u00a0Class, Cultures and Politics\u00a0<\/i>(OUP 2011). Her published articles and essays include work on political debates in Britain during the Second World War, the commemoration and historical memory of early nineteenth-century radicalism, and many aspects of British farming and rural life. She has also written extensively for the\u00a0Times Literary Supplement<\/i>, particularly on visual art.<\/p>\n Clare was a member of the Society\u2019s Council from 2018 to 2021, during which time she served on, and subsequently chaired the Research Support Committee.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div> Dr Adam Budd\t\t Adam Budd is Senior Lecturer in Cultural History and Graduate Officer in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh.<\/p>\n Adam’s research focuses on authorship and print culture during eighteenth century, and on the development of history as an academic discipline. Prior to being appointed Secretary for Education, Adam served as an elected member of the RHS Council, between 2018 and 2022. As Secretary for Education, Adam is responsible for the Society’s policy on higher education<\/a> and support for teaching.<\/p>\n Adam co-authored the\u00a0RHS Report on Race, Ethnicity and Equality<\/i>\u00a0(2018) and has been involved in developing merit-based funding initiatives for early-career researchers, in addition to chairing RHS scholarship awards and research prizes. He is active with the Higher Education Academy and has led numerous Widening Participation initiatives. His latest book is\u00a0Circulating Enlightenment: The Career and Correspondence of Andrew Millar, 1725-68 <\/i>(Oxford University Press, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Professor Barbara Bombi\t\t Barbara Bombi is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Kent. Her research interests cover ecclesiastical and religious history in the High Middle Ages (1200-1450). Barbara was elected RHS Secretary of Research and Chair of the Research Policy Committee in November 2023. In this role, Barbara oversees the Society’s work in speaking for historians on issues related to research and funding<\/a>. Prior to this she served as an elected member of the RHS Council, 2019-23.<\/span><\/p>\n Barbara specialises in the medieval papacy and canon law, the Crusades of the early 13th century, and the history of the Military Orders. Her most recent monograph is Anglo-Papal Relations in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Study in Medieval Diplomacy<\/i><\/a> (2019), published by Oxford University Press. Barbara was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Dr Kate Bradley\t\t Kate Bradley is Reader in Social History & Social Policy in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent. Her research\u00a0 covers the history of social policy in the 20th century, and how voluntary, state and private welfare services are accessible (or not) to citizens. Her most recent book is Lawyers for the Poor: Legal Advice, Voluntary Action and Citizenship in England, 1890-1990<\/i> (Manchester UP, 2019). This project examined the campaigning and hands-on pro bono legal advice provision of individual lawyers, political parties, trade unions, charities, the press, and community activist groups, in order to try to uphold the rights of the neediest.<\/p>\n Kate joined the University of Kent in 2007, having previously held an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship in the Centre for Contemporary British History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.<\/p>\n Kate was elected to the RHS Council in September 2022 and took on the role of Secretary for Publications from March 2025. Prior to this appointment, she has served the historical community in several ways: co-founding History Lab in 2005, co-convening History UK in 2015-16, and as a member of the Social History Society committee since 2017.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Dr Emilie Murphy\t\t Emilie Murphy is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of York. A former RHS Councillor, from November 2025 Emilie has been the Society’s Secretary for Advocacy and Public Engagement, a new Officer role with oversight of the Society’s advocacy and campaign work.<\/span><\/p>\n Emilie is a specialist of the cultural and religious history of England, and English-speaking people abroad, 1500-1700. Her scholarship focuses on sound and hearing, voice and language, and various aspects of performance culture. She is co-editor of <\/span>Sensing the Sacred in Medieval and Early Modern Culture<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>and her essays have appeared in several major journals including <\/span>Renaissance Quarterly, The Historical Journal <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Renaissance Studies. <\/span><\/i>Her current research project is <\/span>The Reformation of the Soundscape in Early Modern England<\/span><\/i> and she is a lead investigator on the AHRC funded research network, <\/span>\u2018Soundscapes in the Early Modern World\u2019<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Emilie enjoys sharing her research with a public audience, and has appeared as an expert contributor radio and television programmes including BBC 1\u2019s <\/span>Countryfile, <\/span><\/i>and BBC Radio 4\u2019s <\/span>Making History<\/span><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Professor Matthias Neumann\t\t Matthias Neumann is Professor of Modern History at the University of East Anglia and the Society’s Treasurer and Chair of the Finance Committee. A historian of the Soviet Union, Matthias is a former President, and current Vice President, of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES).<\/p>\n Matthias’s publications include The Communist Youth League and the Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1917-1932 <\/em>(2011) and the edited volume Rethinking the Russian Revolution as Historical Divide: Tradition, Rupture and Modernity<\/em> (2017). His current research project examines cultural exchange programmes which enabled American children to visit the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Matthias joined the RHS Council in November 2024 and took on the role of Treasurer in January 2025.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/p>\n Dr Cath Feely\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Catherine Feely (generally known as Cath) is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Derby and a social and cultural historian of modern Britain.<\/p>\n Cath\u2019s research focuses on the consumption and adaptation of ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly through the study of publishing and press cultures, and the history of reading and writing. Articles and essays have appeared in journals including History Workshop Journal<\/em>, Journal of Victorian Culture<\/em>, European Review of History<\/em> and edited collections. She co-edited Historical Networks in the Book Trade <\/em>(2016) with John Hinks. She is currently writing a book on the publishing history of Karl Marx\u2019s Capital <\/em>in English.<\/p>\n Prior to being appointed at Derby in 2014, Cath taught at the universities of Manchester, Durham and Sheffield. She has led curricular innovation in Derby\u2019s provision of public history teaching and is College Lead in External Engagement for the College of Arts, Humanities and Education. She is active in forming partnerships with museums and heritage sites, leading to collaborative research and knowledge exchange as well as opportunities for students. Cath also conducts pedagogic research on civic engagement and creativity in historical training and considers teaching an integral part of her research process.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Dr Stella Fletcher\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Stella Fletcher\u00a0studied at the University of Warwick (BA 1986, PhD 1992), where she is an honorary fellow of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance. She taught at the University of Manchester until 2012, from which point she became a full-time carer.<\/p>\n She has served on the Council of the Society for Renaissance Studies and as honorary secretary of the Ecclesiastical History Society, and currently undertakes editorial work for the Historic Religious Buildings Alliance.<\/p>\n Her publications include\u00a0A Very Agreeable Society: The Ecclesiastical History Society, 1961-2011<\/i>\u00a0(2011),\u00a0Roscoe and Italy<\/i>\u00a0(2012) and\u00a0The Popes and Britain<\/i> (2017). Stella was elected to the RHS Council in 2025 and takes up her role from January 2026.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Professor Karen Harvey\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Karen Harvey is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Birmingham. Prior to this, she was Professor of Cultural History at the University of Sheffield. Karen’s research focuses on the history of gender, masculinity, sexuality, the home and material culture in eighteenth-century Britain.<\/p>\n Her books include Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture<\/em> (Cambridge University Press, 2004), The Little Republic: Masculinity and Domestic Authority in Eighteenth-Century Britain<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Imposteress Rabbit-Breeder: Mary Toft and Eighteenth-Century England<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2020), a microhistory of the well-known rabbit-birth hoax.<\/p>\n Her current project is the Leverhulme-funded \u2018Material Identities, Social Bodies: Embodiment in British Letters c.1680-1820′ which uses thousands of familiar letters by men and women to explore people\u2019s intimate experiences of the body.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Dr Dave Hitchcock\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Dave Hitchcock is a historian of early modern social and cultural history. He teaches at Canterbury Christ Church University where he is Reader in Early Modern British History. Dave mainly works on histories of early modern poverty and vagrancy. His publications include the books Vagrancy in English Culture and Society, 1650-1750<\/em> (2016) and The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450\u20131800<\/em> (2020).<\/p>\n Dave sits on the committee of the Social History Society and is a trustee of the Economic History Society (and liaises between the two). He was elected to the RHS Council in 2025 and takes up his role from January 2026.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Professor Mark Knights\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Mark Knights is Professor of History at the University of Warwick and was elected to the Council of the Royal Historical Society in November 2023. His research focuses on early modern political culture in Britain and its empire, and on the history of corruption.<\/p>\n Mark\u2019s most recent publication is\u00a0Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire 1600-1850<\/i>\u00a0(OUP 2021). He is currently working on a cultural biography of a seventeenth-century merchant philosopher; a book charting the history of corruption in Britain and its empire from the 1620s to the 2020s; and the\u00a0Oxford Handbook of the History of Corruption<\/em>.<\/p>\n Mark is a member of the editorial boards of Boydell and Brewer\u2019s \u2018Eighteenth Century Studies\u2019 series and of the journal\u00a0Parliamentary History<\/i>. He has held numerous posts in his department and University. Mark was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Professor Iftikhar H. Malik\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Iftikhar H. Malik\u00a0is Professor-Emeritus at Bath Spa University, where he taught history for 27 years, following his five-year fellowship at St Antony\u2019s College, Oxford. Presently, a member the Common Room at Wolfson College in Oxford, his\u00a0Curating Lived Islam in the Muslim World: British Scholars, Sojourners and the Sleuths<\/em>\u00a0with Routledge came out in June 2021.<\/p>\n In November 2022, his\u00a0The Silk Road and Beyond: Narratives of a Muslim Historian<\/em>\u00a0(Oxford University Press, 2020), received the UBL Award for the best non-fiction work in English in Pakistan.<\/p>\n Iftikhar\u2019s other studies include\u00a0Pashtun Identity and Geopolitics in Southwest Asia: Pakistan and Afghanistan since 9\/11<\/em>\u00a0(Anthem, 2016 & 2017);\u00a0Crescent between Cross and Star: Muslims and the West after 9\/11,<\/em>\u00a0(OUP, 2006); and\u00a0Islam and Modernity: Muslims in Western Europe and the United States\u00a0<\/em>(Pluto, 2003). Iftikhar was elected to the RHS Council in November 2023.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Dr Helen Paul\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Helen Paul is a Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton. A historian of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth century, her work focuses primarily on the South Sea Company and enslavement.<\/p>\n Helen’s publications include The South Sea Bubble: an Economic History of its Origins and Consequences<\/em> (2011) and she is a frequent contributor on programmes such as Radio 4’s In Our Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n Helen was elected a Councillor of the Royal Historical Society in September 2022. She was previously, for six years, Honorary Secretary of the Economic History Society (EHS) and has also served as chair of the EHS Women\u2019s Committee.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Professor Catriona Pennell\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Catriona Pennell is Professor of Modern History and Memory Studies at the University of Exeter, Cornwall campus, Penryn. She recently began a three-year term as Faculty APVC, Research and Impact (HASS) where she is working to promote a positive, kind, and humane research culture amid institutional and sector pressures.<\/span><\/p>\n Catriona specialises in the history of 19th and 20th century Britain and Ireland with a particular focus on the relationship between war, empire, experience, and memory. She has published on various aspects of the experience of the First World War and understandings of cultural historical approaches to the study of modern conflict more generally.<\/span><\/p>\n Catriona\u2019s current research explores the relationship between youth, education, and the transmission of cultural memory and its role in processes of social justice, conflict resolution, and geopolitical advocacy. She has served on several academic and non-academic boards and committees, including charity trustee boards and her local parish council, most recently joining the editorial board of Brill\u2019s History of Warfare series in September 2025. <\/span>Catriona was elected to the RHS Council in 2025 and takes up her role from January 2026.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Professor Olwen Purdue\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Olwen Purdue is Professor of Modern Social History at Queen\u2019s University, Belfast where she works on the social history of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland with a particular focus on social class, urban poverty and welfare. Olwen directs the Centre for Public History at Queen\u2019s and is particularly interested in the role of public history in divided societies.<\/p>\n Olwen\u2019s publications include\u00a0The Big House in the North of Ireland: Land, Power and Social Elites, 1870-1960<\/em>\u00a0(2009); The Irish Lord Lieutenancy 1541-1922 <\/em>(2012); Urban Spaces in Nineteenth-Century Ireland <\/em>(2018); and The First Great Charity of this Town: Belfast Charitable Society and its Role in the Developing City<\/em>\u00a0(2022). Her new monograph,\u00a0Workhouse Child: Poverty, Child Welfare and the Poor Law in industrial Belfast, 1880-1918,\u00a0<\/em>is due out with Liverpool University Press in 2023, and an edited collection on Difficult Public Histories in Ireland is due out with Routledge in 2024. Olwen was formerly international editor for\u00a0The Public Historian\u00a0<\/em>and is currently series editor for Liverpool University Press\u2019 Nineteenth-Century Ireland series.<\/p>\n Olwen was elected to the RHS Council in September 2022. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Irish Museums Association, a member of the advisory board for the Ulster Museum, and a Governor of the Linen Hall Library.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n Dr Jes\u00fas Sanjurjo\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Jes\u00fas Sanjurjo is a Leverhulme & Chancellor\u2019s Fellow in Atlantic World History at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Before joining Strathclyde, he taught at the universities of Cambridge, Cardiff and York. He obtained his PhD in 2018 at the University of Leeds, supported by an AHRC-WRoCAH PhD scholarship.<\/span><\/p>\n Jes\u00fas <\/span>is a historian of the Atlantic World who specialises in radical politics, race, slavery, carceral systems, and state violence in Spain\u2019s Atlantic Empire ca. 1700-1900. His first book, In the Blood of Our Brothers. Abolitionism and the End of the Slave Trade in Spain\u2019s Atlantic Empire, 1800\u20131870\u00a0<\/i>(University of Alabama Press, 2021) was a finalist for the Paul E. Lovejoy Prize. In December 2023, Editorial Comares published its Spanish edition.<\/p>\n Since then, Jes\u00fas has been working on two major research projects: one focused on the political repression unleashed by the colonial authorities in the aftermath of Manuel Lorenzo\u2019s failed revolution in Santiago de Cuba in 1836 (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) and a second project centred on tracking the genesis of systemic racism in the Spanish Empire\u2019s carceral system.<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Society’s Council & Governance The Royal Historical Society is predominantly a voluntary organisation. Its Council (the Society\u2019s trustees) is made up of RHS Fellows each of whom serves a four-year term working on our various committees. Selected members of Council hold Officer posts with responsibility for, among other areas, research and education policy or …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":1130,"menu_order":333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royalhistsoc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royalhistsoc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royalhistsoc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royalhistsoc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royalhistsoc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/royalhistsoc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50051,"href":"https:\/\/royalhistsoc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30\/revisions\/50051"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royalhistsoc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royalhistsoc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Officers of the Royal Historical Society<\/h2>\n
Vice President of the Royal Historical Society\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/files.royalhistsoc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/17205659\/clare-griffiths-200x160.jpg\")
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Secretary for Education, and Chair of the Education Policy Committee\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/files.royalhistsoc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/17205204\/Adam-Budd-240x160.jpeg\")
Secretary for Research, and Chair of the Research Policy Committee\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Secretary for Publications, and Chair of the Publications Committee\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/files.royalhistsoc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/02121517\/KB-229x160.jpeg\")
Secretary for Advocacy and Public Engagement\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Treasurer, and Chair of the Finance Committee\t<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/files.royalhistsoc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/25045150\/Screenshot-2024-11-25-at-04.49.55-240x160.png\")
Councillors of the Royal Historical Society<\/h2>\n
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