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‘My sweet San Gimignano’: a Tuscan commune in the Middle Ages
Historian article
The northern Italian town of San Gimignano is famous for its high-rise medieval towers. The size of these fortified buildings might lead to the assumption that the town was a place of constant conflict and discord. Here John Law uses a wide variety of evidence to argue that San Gimignano...
‘My sweet San Gimignano’: a Tuscan commune in the Middle Ages
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Vikings in the East: from Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin
Historian article
Martyn Whittock explores the lesser-known world of the Vikings who travelled east, forging the early state of Kyivan Rus and leaving a legacy still debated in Russia and Ukraine today. From silver routes and sagas to modern political claims, this article explores how their story and origins remain as dramatic...
Vikings in the East: from Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin
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Doing a Gombrich: Year 9 make connections by shaping big narratives
Article
Oliver Scott explains how he fused two goals: planning a new Year 9 history curriculum and finding a way to help Year 9 connect it all together. Inspired by the distinctive style of E.H. Gombrich, Scott decided to have his pupils write a grand narrative at mid- and end-year points. The narrative...
Doing a Gombrich: Year 9 make connections by shaping big narratives
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Look again: teaching about disability in history
Teaching History article
After listening to a talk by historian Phillipa Vincent-Connolly and following this up with reading about disability in history, Alex Fairlamb examined her own department’s teaching to consider how effectively it included narratives of disabled people. This was the beginning of a productive journey. She concluded that much more needed to be...
Look again: teaching about disability in history
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Triumphs Show: Seeing consequences in 3D
Teaching History feature
‘You think you’ve found a way to help our Year 7s explain historical consequence?’ My head of department sounded intrigued. ‘View them as shockwaves!’ I exclaimed. ‘Just like Boba Fett’s ship in Star Wars!’ My head of department raised an eyebrow.
It was September 2024, and I had just joined...
Triumphs Show: Seeing consequences in 3D
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Move Me On: what adjustments are reasonable to accommodate a trainee’s neurodivergence?
Teaching History feature
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On: what adjustments are reasonable to accommodate a trainee’s neurodivergence?
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The Historian 149: Pandemics
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial (Read article for free)
6 Florence Nightingale and epidemics – Richard Bates (Read article)
11 Real Lives: Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial in Hints churchyard: Edward George Keeling – Trevor James (Read article)
12 The experience of Bilston in the cholera epidemic of 1831–32: a melancholy pre-eminence in...
The Historian 149: Pandemics
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Learning history through the lens of artefacts
Primary History article
Lindsay Marshall is a primary school teacher and subject leader for history in a primary school on the Wirral. She has embedded the use of artefacts throughout her school’s curriculum. In this article Lindsay outlines the importance of allowing children to ‘get up close and personal’ with history in order...
Learning history through the lens of artefacts
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Primary History 103
The primary education journal of the Historical Association
05 Editorial (Read article)
06 Planting seeds of past, present and future: exploring environmental impact alongside early skills development in the EYFS – Mary Potts (Read article)
11 Pupil voice with SEND pupils in primary history – Lorna Spencer (Read article)
12 Why the Great Fire of London was not unique: local fires as a...
Primary History 103
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Pupil voice with SEND pupils in primary history
Primary History article
In this article, Lorna Spencer suggests that pupil voice is particularly important with SEND children. At the same time, this can cause challenges, as the way it is done with mainstream pupils may not be feasible with SEND pupils. She suggests some ways in which challenge might be confronted...
Pupil voice with SEND pupils in primary history
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The Roaring Twenties: teaching a decade of change across Key Stages 1 and 2
Primary History article
This article explores how one topic can be used in different ways to support historical understanding at Key Stage 1 or Key Stage 2. The themes highlighted could link into possible golden threads to enable connections to be made across a school’s curriculum. The ‘Roaring Twenties’ also provide a real...
The Roaring Twenties: teaching a decade of change across Key Stages 1 and 2
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... piracy and empire in the early modern world
Teaching History feature
The topic of early modern global piracy has attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent decades, partly due to its own intrinsic interest and, it must be said, its entertainment value. However, historians have also explored its connections with broader themes such as empire and colonisation, social history, global economic networks,...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... piracy and empire in the early modern world
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Objects and objections: getting critical about using artefacts in primary history
Primary History article
Jenny uses her experience and expertise from a school committed to using museum education to outline ways in which artefacts can be used effectively in primary settings. This article is based on practice at Langley Heritage Primary Academy. She outlines some of the challenges and how practice was refined, including actual...
Objects and objections: getting critical about using artefacts in primary history
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Have we become better at organising and running primary history visits?
Primary History article
Visits have been a mainstream of primary history for decades. In this article Tim Lomas looks at the way schools have approached history visits and how these have changed in recent years. There are examples of possible activities through the primary years and a summary of what seems to represent...
Have we become better at organising and running primary history visits?
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How foundational concepts, supporting concepts and concrete examples can help untangle the past at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
A central organising principle of any curriculum is the substantive concepts that underpin it. They provide a secure structure and enable students to develop deep understanding through multiple encounters with essential abstract ideas that are given concrete form in different historical contexts. Identifying the different levels or tiers to which different...
How foundational concepts, supporting concepts and concrete examples can help untangle the past at Key Stage 3
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Out and About in South London
Historian feature
In an unusual Out and About feature, the Young Historian Local History Senior Prize winner Flora Wilton Tregear shows us what her local area can tell us about the history of public health.
Taking the DLR out from Lewisham you pass through Deptford Bridge station towards Greenwich. Here my father...
Out and About in South London
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Who were the Greeks and how diverse was their society?
Primary History article
Susie Townsend explores ancient Greece through the use of maps in this innovative and interesting article. The focus here is on diversity within ancient Greek civilisations and the article includes some activities to support learning. There is something for everyone to take from this piece.
Who were the Greeks and how diverse was their society?
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Opinion: the populist politics of Joseph Chamberlain and Donald Trump
Historian feature
What are the pitfalls and pluses of comparing historical figures with contemporary politicians? Chris Godden argues that recent comparisons of Donald Trump with one of his predecessors may be wide of the mark, but that a more illuminating parallel may be found with one of Britain’s most controversial nineteenth-century politicians.
Opinion: the populist politics of Joseph Chamberlain and Donald Trump
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The Historian 148: Legacy of war
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial (Read article for free)
6 Blood and Iron: the violent birth of modern Germany – A nation forged in war – Katja Hoyer (Read article)
12 Richard III and the Princes in the Tower: update – Tim Thornton (Read article)
16 Monty’s school: the benign side of Viscount...
The Historian 148: Legacy of war
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The Historian 149: Out now
The magazine of the Historical Association
Read The Historian 149: Pandemics
This edition of The Historian follows immediately after the annual Local and Community History Month, which we launched many years ago. Although our expressed purpose on this occasion is to place a special focus on the concept of pandemics and epidemics, a number of our...
The Historian 149: Out now
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Real Lives: Eduard Friedrich Kärger
Historian feature
In this article, Alex van der Ham and Ling-Hua Huang explain how a casual browse through a nineteenth century journal led to an intriguing research journey into the author of a scientific dissertation. Here they discovered interesting insights into Prussian society in the years leading to the Unification of Germany,...
Real Lives: Eduard Friedrich Kärger
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Interpreting Cyrus the Great for the lower school curriculum
Teaching History article
Tom Leather describes in this article the process by which he and his department extended their ancient history curriculum through an interpretations enquiry about Cyrus the Great. This tested both the subject knowledge of a number of members of the department, and their planning process. His reflections are illuminating not just...
Interpreting Cyrus the Great for the lower school curriculum
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In conversation with Henrike Lähnemann
Historian feature
In The Life of Nuns: love, politics, and religion in medieval German convents (Open Book Publishers, 2024), Henrike Lähnemann and Eva Schlotheuber explore female religious communities from the late medieval and early Reformation-era in northern Germany, revealing them to be vibrant centres of learning, administration, devotion, friendship, and negotiation. The book challenges...
In conversation with Henrike Lähnemann
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Planning a more diverse and coherent Year 7 curriculum
Teaching History article
In this article, Jacob Olivey describes his department’s efforts to both diversify their Key Stage 3 curriculum and secure greater curricular coherence. Building on a large body of research and practice, Olivey sought new forms of curricular coherence through the selection and sequencing of substantive content across the curriculum. He...
Planning a more diverse and coherent Year 7 curriculum
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Britain on pause: remembering the 1926 General Strike
Primary History article
In this article, Kate Rigby looks back at the 1926 General Strike and considers how this could be used to explore significance, cause and consequence in Key Stage 2...
Britain on pause: remembering the 1926 General Strike
