Keynotes
Presidential Lecture
Heirlooms: family, ancestry and memory in early modern England
Alexandra Walsham
HA President
This lecture will explore early modern books of hours, bibles and prayer books that were passed down the generations as treasured possessions. Their pages and flyleaves were places and spaces in which people recorded genealogical information and which carried family history, memory and emotion. HA President Alex Walsham will situate this discussion within the wider context of other objects, including devotional aids and other domestic artefacts that were bequeathed as heirlooms. The lecture brings the histories of the book and material culture into conversation and also opens up questions about the role of the family in the making of modern archives.
Alexandra Walsham is President of the Historical Association and Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. She
was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009 and of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2013. She was appointed a CBE for services to history in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2017.
Friday: 09:30–10:45
Friday evening keynote
Portable closets: secrets and lives in queer Britain since gay liberation
Matt Cook
University of Oxford
The double life and the closet tend to be associated with a time before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 and the Gay Liberation Front call to ‘come out’ in the early 1970s. Although the social and cultural terrain in Britain has certainly shifted, this lecture shows how and why various types of secret have continued to matter to many gay men and have helped to make their lives liveable. It looks at how people’s backgrounds and families and the places where they live have made a portable closet a necessary, comforting and even enjoyable place to which to retreat in the years since gay liberation.
Matt Cook is Jonathan Cooper Professor of the History of Sexuality at Oxford University. He is a member of the HWJ editorial collective and was formerly Professor of Modern History at Birkbeck University of London and director of the Raphael Samuel History Centre. He is the author of London and the Culture of Homosexuality (2003), Queer Domesticities (2014) and – with Alison Oram – Queer Beyond London (2023), and has co-edited five other queer-themed books. His Writing Queer History and A Queer Scrapbook of Britain and Ireland (edited with Justin Bengry, E-J Scott and Rebecca Jennings) will appear this autumn.
Friday: 17:45–18:45
Saturday morning keynote
Diarmaid MacCulloch
University of Oxford
Unsettling many settled facts: pleasures and responsibilities for the historian of Christian views on sex
Diarmaid MacCulloch explores the enjoyable complexities of surveying two millennia of Christian discussion of sex and marriage, and considers the complex relationship between past, present and future in the thinking of the world's most numerous religious grouping.
Diarmaid MacCulloch is Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church and Fellow of St Cross College at the University of Oxford. An author and broadcaster, he has written extensively on the sixteenth century and beyond, including his History of Christianity: the first three thousand years (Penguin/Allen Lane). He was knighted in the UK New Year’s Honours List of 2012 and received the Historical Association's Medlicott Medal for outstanding services to history in 2023.
Saturday: 09:15–10:30
Dawson Lecture
Michael Riley
UCL Institute of Education, London
History around us: why teaching about the historic environment matters more than ever
Engaging children and young people with the history around them is one of the great joys of history teaching. Studying the buildings and landscapes of the past can deepen our understanding of the lived experience and mental world of people in past societies. More profoundly, it can help us to understand ourselves in time. In an age of environmental crisis, engaging pupils with the history around them matters more than ever. Michael’s lecture will reflect on the power and potential of learning about the historic environment.
Michael Riley was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Historical Association for his contribution to history education. He now works at UCL’s Institute of Education where he teaches on the PGCE programme and contributes to the work of the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education. An enduring focus of his work has been on teaching about the relationship between people and environment in the past.
Saturday: 15:50–16:50
Suitable for all key stages
