The future for the past
Four historians discuss the issues shaping the study of history in universities, from Covid-19 to calls to decolonise the curriculum
The teaching of history at universities is facing huge challenges: courses are being cut, debates rage about decolonising curricula, and the Covid-19 crisis is only adding to the pressure. Historians Sophie Ambler, Richard Partington, Jason Todd and Anna Whitelock discuss the big issues confronting the academic discipline of history
Rhiannon Davies Competition between institutions and courses is increasingly fierce, with funding cuts adding to the pressures. So why should people study history at university?
Anna Whitelock I think it’s a really important question, and a challenging one. The number of applications for degrees in history and history-related subjects has fallen in recent years. But, in my opinion, the need for history and to study it is perhaps greater than ever. History is, of course, about looking backwards and gaining knowledge and understanding, but it’s also a lens through which to engage with the present. In that sense, it’s critical – it’s not simply about being stuck in the past and in the archive.
Sophie Ambler Studying history at university can also teach us empathy – the ability to put ourselves in the shoes, through our sources, of somebody who might have lived on the far side of the world or down our street 100 or 1,000 years ago, and understand what forces shaped their world or how they sought to shape it. And that can sometimes be a very uncomfortable experience – it can sometimes be very challenging – but it’s what we do as historians.
In a world of increasingly polarised debate, the ability to empathise with people who might have a very different situation and world view to us is one of the other reasons why history is so crucial now.
Richard Partington In terms of transferable skills, the value of history remains immensely high. But I also think about history from a leisure perspective: it’s one of the ways people escape from the pressures and worries of life. And it’s very important that we remind everyone, I think, that learning to do something that will help you in your private life as well as your professional and public life is really important.
Jason Todd I agree: it’s enormous fun. And, from a career perspective, a history degree can set you up well. History’s got this ability to adapt to a range of different professions, and I think that’s really important given the prevailing idea that STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] is the only field where you can have a lucrative and productive career. In fact, evidence suggests that history can lead to great careers. It might be a slower burn but, ultimately, postgraduate historians can earn as much as anybody else might in particular professions.
AW I also think it’s really important to acknowledge that history yields creative content. Historical research makes its way into television programmes and radio programmes, and into audio guides at heritage sites. Increasingly, and really excitingly, it’s also used in online historical computer games, which is a huge growth area – more and more gamers are wanting to explore authentic historical worlds. It’s kind of amazing how these sorts of careers are spawned by history.
There’s a quote that I really love from Steve Jobs, who said: “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough – it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” In other words, it’s the humanities that give soul to something – and increasingly that’s being appreciated in the high-tech sector and in the AI sector. There, the big challenges for the future are: what can machines not do that humans can?
That knowledge, that understanding and that empathy is absolutely critical. In a sense, historians are the custodians of humanity, and it’s really important that we feed into the new directions of modern technology, design and the workplace. So as much as it’s about the past, it’s really critical for the future.
SA It’s also worth pointing out how good history is, and historically has been, as a preparation for leadership in the UK and the rest of the world. We’re in an age now where the president of the United States is a history graduate. If you look at the number of MPs and cabinet ministers in the UK who have history degrees or classics degrees – including our prime minister – you’ll see that the numbers are substantial. The big questions of history seem to be such a good preparation for leadership roles.
If I think, for instance, of my own special subject module at Lancaster looking at the 13th century, it’s the world of Magna Carta and Simon de Montfort in the European context. The big questions we consider – such as how governments wield power, what are the limits of their rule, how can they be held to account, what possibilities are open to a female when she steps into a leadership role in a patriarchal world – are perennial. Thinking about these kinds of debates through history sets up history graduates to be leaders, whether that’s in technology or industry, in teaching or in government.
RD 'arlier this year, Aston University and London’s Southbank University announced plans to cut their history courses. What implications will cuts like these have for history as a discipline?
RP In my present job, as academic head of an institution which is 70 per cent STEM, I’m perhaps uniquely placed to answer this. I think we’re in a phase in which there has been a rather crude understanding of the importance of STEM. Historical analysis shows that the UK has been underperforming in all sorts of ways – in terms of scientific development, engineering, research and development, a whole pile of things – so I understand why the government has pushed the STEM line so consistently. But I think this repeated assertion that STEM is the only way forward in terms of careers has really undercut what’s been going on in history departments around the UK.
It’s important that we remind ourselves of times when there have been real panics about the disappearance of subjects such as chemistry or mathematics. So the threat that history seems to be under right now is certainly something we should be considering, I think very seriously. But this is a moment, and the moment may shift.
RD 'fforts are increasingly being made to “decolonise” the curriculum – to better represent non-'uropean voices, and to improve historical awareness of the often problematic contexts of sources and events. How is this being achieved in practice, and should more be done?
JT There’s a danger that we look at decolonisation only in terms of diversifying the curriculum. One of the things that may come out of the discussion around decolonising is a need to really think about how race works: historically, in the present moment and, perhaps, in the future as well. But we don’t do that by simply inserting new black and brown voices into the curriculum. Race is mutually constructing: we have to look at whiteness as well as ideas of blackness. So I think the curriculum can take us only so far.
For instance, we’ve got to remember that the university project, historically, was actually not separate from our imperialist ventures. Universities were the places where a lot of colonial knowledge was created and constructed. Certainly in Oxford, there’s been quite a lot of work done examining the university’s own role in that colonial project, and I think that is important.
RP We’ve also got to keep the politicians out of curricula. We need to resist culture war, either from the right or from the left, trying to take over what we do. We need to be in control, as historians, with our students, with one another, all together as a community, deciding what we study and why we study it. History shouldn’t become a plaything of politicians.
AW Decolonisation is a buzzword but also an incredibly important priority, I think, across the university sector. At my previous institution, Royal Holloway, various people – not least some of the university’s own students from black and Asian backgrounds – talked to us and taught us about what we need to do to reflect our student body, and how to decolonise things such as reading lists and so on. As academics we still have a hell of a lot to learn, and I don’t think this is something that can happen overnight. We can’t just say, as universities, “Yes, we’ve decolonised our reading list and that’s all fine”, because it’s an evolving process.
Although decolonising reading lists is an important aspect, it’s actually about inclusion and accessibility and diversity in a really broad sense. So decolonising is something that hits the headlines, but actually it’s just one quite small part of an overall sea change in how universities go about doing what they do.
RD What impact is the Covid-19 pandemic continuing to have on students and study today, particularly in terms of remote learning?
AW In many ways, the opportunities and challenges of online teaching and assessments have been really interesting. For some people it’s actually enhanced accessibility, and some students with physical disabilities or mental-health challenges have flourished this year. For students with social
The ability to empathise with people with a very different world view is one of the reasons why history is so crucial now SOPHIE AMBLER
anxiety and issues around coming on to campus, for example, learning online has been really helpful. However, in general I think that, though students want reading materials and so on online, they do want teaching in person and on campus. That’s going to be really important to get back to.
SA One thing that I’ve noticed this year is how we’ve changed our approach to dissertations. We’ve had to think more carefully about what topics students can take on, because they don’t necessarily have direct library access; we’ve had to look at areas for which there are online repositories of source material. The quality of some of the dissertations I’ve seen this year has been absolutely outstanding, because of the richness of engagement with primary sources. This has been one of the positives to come out of the situation: thinking about how to conduct research in a new way as an undergraduate.
RD If we were having this discussion in July 2022, what topics do you think weEd be covering?
RP We might be beginning to analyse, as historians, what’s just happened to us all. It’s currently still in the realms of political analysis but, in a year’s time, we’ll be able to start to step back a little and draw comparisons. Earlier today I saw data on the increase in wages – at the moment we think wage inflation is running at 8 per cent. This figure is heavily skewed by increases for some at the bottom of the pay scale, where the combination of the effects of the pandemic and Brexit has removed personnel from the economic stage, as many people from outside the UK working in lower-paid jobs have gone home. In short, if you’re a lorry driver, for instance, you can now charge more for your labour than you did before, because there are fewer lorry drivers about.
Of course, I’ve got in my head the Black Death: one of its greatest ramifications, which government struggled with, was the economic impact of there being fewer people around. So I think we’ll be starting to be excited by some of the repercussions of the current crisis.
By next summer, I think historians will be beginning to get excited by some of the repercussions of the current Covid-19 crisis RICHARD PARTINGTON
SA Building on that, I would hope – but not necessarily expect – that we also use those skills as historians to work out how we tackle political discussion and debate, particularly when it comes to social media. The increasing polarisation of political opinion on the right and the left – and how history gets pulled into that – is a huge issue, and it’s only being accelerated by social media algorithms. One of the big questions for historians is: how do we study that? And how do we archive those debates and discussions so that we can analyse them in the future?
JT A topic that we haven’t spoken a lot about is climate change. Young people were taking to the streets, even before the Black Lives Matter protests, talking about climate change and activism. We need to think about how history fits in to this. Are the types of frameworks and scales of time we use able to deal with some of the questions that climate change is prompting? Taking the first point, current climate change issues demand a framework that goes beyond the nation state, as climate change affects the entire planet. And thinking about scales of time, a long view is needed for us to understand humanity’s impact on the Earth. Perhaps these considerations will become foregrounded in relation to what we’re doing as historians.
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Hear the full conversation on the HistoryExtra podcast at: historyextra.com/podcast