Historians at King’s are part of an exciting new venture in Contemporary British History, which will help to refashion Britain’s national story. King’s Contemporary British History (KCBH) is a cross-departmental and cross-Faculty research initiative, which brings together existing expertise in twentieth-century British history from across the university. It draws together the extraordinary strengths in the subject found mainly in the departments of History, War Studies, Defence Studies, Political Economy and English. King’s has around fifty scholars contemporary British history.

 

The centre’s goal is to develop a flexible and dynamic way of analysing contemporary British society that will have genuine public relevance both at a policy and popular level. In this, historical argument and understanding has been, and will continue to be central. The Brexit vote was a clear example of how very particular historical images of the nation in the world were mobilised. King’s Contemporary British History will help refashion British national history by bringing together historical work of many different kinds.

 

King’s has a uniquely diverse wealth of existing expertise across various domains in the study of contemporary Britain. Our strengths include military history, science, technology, and medicine, heritage studies, imperial history, politics, religion, and gender studies.  KCBH will make these great strengths visible, and support and develop new research initiatives and postgraduate training in all aspects of modern and contemporary British history. KCBH works with other initiatives that connect to the public and public institutions such as History & Policy, Historians in Residence, and the Strand Group.

 

The study of Contemporary British History in London goes back to the 1960s, and was consolidated with the establishment of the Institute of Contemporary British History in 1985 by (Sir) Anthony Seldon and (Lord) Peter Hennessy. The Institute moved to King’s College London in 2010. King’s Contemporary British History builds on this distinguished tradition by creating a larger and more diverse enterprise.

 

The centre has recently been awarded funding from the ‘King’s Together’ scheme allowing us to run workshops (for King’s staff). It will hold ‘launch’ conference in September 2017, and much else besides. Over the coming weeks we will be launching a new website, so look out for that. For now, you can follow KCBH on Twitter @KingsCBH and Facebook. We are also in the process of creating an internal mailing list to keep people abreast of our work and developments. If you would like to be added to this mailing list, or would like more information on being involved in KCBH, please email: laura.carter@kcl.ac.uk.