Royal Historical Society

The Royal Historical Society is the UK's leading learned society for historians, dedicated to advancing scholarly historical research, fostering professional standards, and promoting public understanding of history for societal benefit. Guided by values of intellectual diversity, academic freedom, ethical scholarship, inclusivity, and collaborative practice, it prioritizes broad access to funding for those without institutional support, believing transformative impact arises from nurturing innovative research, skills development, and public-facing history that bridges academia and communities, empowering diverse historians to elevate the discipline's relevance and rigor.

It supports historical research grants enabling archival fieldwork, manuscript analysis, and discrete projects for postgraduate students, early career scholars, and established researchers tackling underexplored historical themes; early career fellowships funding methodological advancements and skills training in historical methodologies; collaborative workshop grants fostering interdisciplinary historical inquiry, conferences, and peer learning among historians from higher education, archives, museums, heritage sectors, and community groups; public history initiatives including exhibitions, outreach events, and innovative projects engaging non-academic audiences with historical narratives, heritage interpretation, and community storytelling. These interventions address gaps in historical scholarship, professional development barriers for emerging talent, limited public access to historical knowledge, and underrepresentation in the profession, delivering impact through knowledge dissemination, capacity building, and inclusive historical practice that connects past insights to contemporary societal challenges.

It excludes core operational costs, unrestricted organizational support, and capital projects, focusing instead on targeted project-based historical work. Distinctive for its advocacy role alongside small-scale grants, it prioritizes UK-based historians lacking other funding, community historians outside academia, and initiatives promoting diversity, innovation, and public engagement, with openness to international dimensions, setting it apart as the primary champion of collaborative, publicly relevant historical scholarship.