History in Public: Power and Process, Harm and Help

Abstract

This introductory piece explains the choice of public history as a focus for this special issue of History, and its emphasis on the work of early-career historians. 'Public history' is a notoriously nebulous concept. We outline some of the most common ways in which it is understood, and discuss why we believe that its methods and approaches are of enormous value to all those involved in historical work, whether they would consider themselves to be 'public historians' or not. We also introduce the contributions making up the rest of this issue, which features the work of twenty-five mostly early-career historians and moves from Greece to England, India, Tobago, the United States, Norway, Northern Ireland, and online. The introduction provides an appetiser for some of the approaches, ideas and struggles emerging from public history, and the richness of this constantly evolving field. IThis special issue of History: The Official Journal of the Historical Association showcases exciting new work from twenty-five largely earlycareer historians, organised around the theme of public history. Moving from Greece, to England, to India, Tobago, the United States (US), Norway, Northern Ireland, and online, these pieces offer a snapshot of some of the ideas, findings, challenges and experiments that are engaging with public history around the world. 1 As editors for this issue (and as recent Editorial Fellows and members of the journal's Early Career Editorial Board), we were given considerable 1 Note on authorship: the four authors contributed equally and collaboratively to this introduction (and to the special issue as a whole). Names are listed alphabetically by first name, which also facilitates Open Access publishing.

Building on racism: The Porteus Hall controversy at the University of Hawai‘i.

“…Recently, historians have written about public history, including working with community members in historical research and deliberation in a way comparable to participatory research designs and other forms of substantive public engagement in the sciences (Romein et al, 2022; Rutherford, 2021). Moving toward a public history that works as historical activism would mean appreciating the incalculable but oft-neglected epistemic value of community members’ experience rather than confining history to textual evidence (Dyck, 2021).…”