At the HA, we know that budgets are tight and being able to afford access to the best CPD, guidance and support is increasingly difficult. We are here to help. If you are part of a Multi-Academy Trust or federation, or soft federation of local authority schools, you can save money on...

At the HA, we know that budgets are tight and being able to afford access to the best CPD, guidance and support is increasingly difficult. We are here to help. If you are part of a Multi-Academy Trust or federation, or a soft federation of local authority schools, you can save money...

Teachers of History in Kent and Medway schools are invited to apply for the 2024-25 Ian Coulson Bursary for Local History/Archaeology in Schools. A grant of up to £1000 is available to help teachers develop new teaching resources for local history and/or archaeology in both primary and secondary schools. The...

Thank you for being a member of the Historical Association. Your membership is what enables the HA to continue supporting the teaching, learning and enjoyment of history at all levels, for generations to come. As part of our membership community you are important in shaping the development of the association,...

Welcome to this packed spring edition of HA News. Take a look at the programme for our Annual Conference in May, including the first keynote by our new President Professor Alexandra Walsham and this year’s Dawson Lecture recipient Dr Penelope Harnett, who is featured in these pages. We are also pleased to announce that this year's Medlicott Medal will be awarded to the...

20th-century Chinese history is both terrifying and fascinating; it is often overlooked by many or simply seen through an East-West Cold War prism. This has sometimes led to people in the West viewing the Chinese people as unfathomable communist groups and without individuality. Therefore, when serious acts of rebellion against...

Haiti has been famous over the centuries for a number of reasons: most importantly for a slave rebellion that led to it winning independence from France in 1804. To this day the majority of the people in this Caribbean country are descended from those formally enslaved people. Sadly, in recent...

Next month the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – NATO – will be 75 years old, and at the end of February 2024 Sweden was given the full green light to join it.  NATO is a collective security organisation created shortly after the Second World War as one of the methods...

If you lived during the early 1980s in the UK, it was frequently marked by news images of men on picket lines and others in dole queues. The Britain that had ‘never had it so good’ of the 1960s was in industrial decline only 20 years later. A central point...

The study of history allows historians to explore the past in many ways and for many reasons. In recent years the debates around understanding wider histories, or less narrow interpretations of history, and the people who are part of it have been important. It is not that the past was...

It is hard to underestimate the impact that the ancient Near East has had on the history of the world, and the lasting hold it has had on our imaginations. From the birth of the written word, the wheel and the first city-states to the pyramids and the pharaohs, we...

It’s the start of a new year – what can we expect? As we don’t have a crystal ball we can’t tell you what will happen, but as historians we can tell you about some of the things we will be remembering or marking over 2024. We think there will...

Around 30 years ago I came across a book called The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. It’s a novel about a detective who tries to solve the mystery of the two Plantagenet princes who disappeared from the Tower of London under their uncle’s watch. Their uncle was to become King Richard...

On 13 November 2023 some of the HA team were fortunate enough to be in a glorious room at Claridge’s in Mayfair, London to hear the announcement of the winner of the prestigious Wolfson History Prize. To a full room it was announced that the winner was independent historian Halik...

The British have always been a bit snarky about Napoleon – I guess that’s the way victors can play it. For the French, they often seem either to love or loathe him; the same it seems goes for many historians. What does seem to be clear from the recent discussions...

27 January 2024 is Holocaust Memorial Day, an annual event to recognise and remember the murder of six million Jews, as well as other victims of Nazi persecution including minority groups and political and ideological opponents. The day is also an opportunity to remember the other genocides that have been...

The Kingdom of Poland started its existence in the medieval period as one of the most important countries of eastern Europe. Positioned on key trading routes, it became a powerful nation that had periods of remarkable stability, playing a major role in both the Renaissance and the Reformation. Despite this,...

If my generation all remember where they were when the aeroplanes, hijacked by terrorists, flew into the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001, then my parents' generation all knew where they were when they heard about the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. Before the conspiracy theorists and the...

Physical, mental and neurological disability and differences have existed for as long as people have roamed the earth, with different cultures, groups and communities responding differently to how to support those individuals. How disability has been recognised and treated is not something that has always been recorded over human history,...

When the seasons change and the autumn and winter coats come out with a bare lapel space, we are often reminded that Remembrance time is upon us. In this and recent years the reality of war has never been far away from our news feeds. That reality may be overseas...