Historical Association Annual Conference, Liverpool, May 2025

If you missed it then you missed a good one.

We had outstanding keynotes, excellent workshops, totally engaging general talks, fascinating visits and a brilliantly diverse exhibition. The two days were jam packed with expertise, conversations and activities – oh and the location and the food were both pretty good too.

We had been waiting four years to get to Liverpool, but the wait was worth it. Kicking off with a walk on the Thursday evening for the early birds (rather than the Liver birds), we ensured that there was always something to do – if you wanted it. The atmosphere seemed to be continually on the up with no disasters or doom – which is pretty usually anywhere else in the world these days.

The keynotes made everyone think and reassess either their own thoughts on subjects or their own research approaches and teaching. Professor Alex Walsham made us all want to rush to find either our own family Bible or someone else’s to see what had been written in the front pages and alongside texts, so that we could track the social history of a family and its losses and loves. The multiple ways that identity is formed, with its complexities, contradictions and the human capacity to switch between ‘clans’ (conferred or adopted), was explored with Professor Matt Cook’s exploration of LGBTQ life in the 1970s and 80s.

Medlicott Medal recipient and broadcast historian Diarmaid MacCulloch kept everyone spellbound on his journey through the history of sex in the Christian Church – an eye-opening tale that made many question how they wove the story of religion through various historical themes, and how on some occasions they hadn’t ‘read between the lines’ enough. While the final keynote of the Dawson Lecture, from Dr Michael Riley, was a reminder of how history, environment, geography and human behaviour had merged to create the history of places and how they have changed. He expressed what we as historians can do to understand and tackle the current climate emergency.

The talks and workshops were soooooo good that we didn’t even lose people to the sunshine outside or the rather well-known department store immediately next door. It was, to quote one of those attending, ‘The best two days they had had all year’. When the whole thing came to an end participants left feeling buoyed up with ideas, though quite possibly weighted down with books and free exhibitor promotional merchandise – while the HA staff took up the challenge to make 2026 in Newcastle even better.

Challenge accepted! See you in the Toon next May.