History Today

Despite progress since the 1970s, female historians are still treated unfairly both inside and outside the academy. Things must change, says Suzannah Lipscomb.

Two conquests of England in quick succession led to a period of shifting identities and allegiances. Courtnay Konshuh and Ryan Lavelle explore how those on the losing side of history tried to forge a place in a new world under new lords.

The survival of a recently discovered song by the early Greek poet is little short of a miracle, says David Gribble. How was it discovered and what does it add to our picture of a complex and elusive figure?

Kate Wiles provides context for the first European image of the Aztec capital, razed by the Spanish in 1521.

Long before today’s project for a European political and economic union, William Penn, the English founder of Pennsylvania, offered a utopian vision of a Europe beyond the nation state, as Peter Schröder explains. 

History is not only written by the victors. Those chronicling the 11th-century conquests in England and Scandinavia tried to rehabilitate the reputations of Byrhtnoth, Harald Hardrada, and others.

In the popular imagination, William the Conqueror is, without doubt, the villain, yet the sources we have for his life are ambivalent.

Over the last 30 years, western ideas about the Ottoman Empire have been transformed, just as Turkish attitudes towards the West have become increasingly negative, writes Erik Zurcher.

Is reality simply a collection of unconnected moments and impressions? If so, what does it mean for our understanding of the past? For one Argentine writer, fiction was the perfect place to explore such questions.

The Islamic world produced some of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages, including a number of remarkable female scholars. Arezou Azad examines who these women were and why their place in history has been neglected.