
Opinion Articles
H&P encourages historians to use their expertise to shed light on issues of the day. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece for publication, please see our editorial guidelines. We currently have 342 Opinion Articles listed by date and they are all freely searchable by theme, author or keyword.
After the statues fall: decolonising Hellenic studies
Professor Paul Cartledge, newly appointed President of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, reflects on recent protest movements and the need for decolonisation and renewal in the classics – and in the great museum collections.
Read MoreSchool meals and child welfare in times of crisis: the past and future of welfare policy
Marcus Rashford's intervention prompted a government u-turn on providing free school meals over the summer – Bernard Harris explores how previous crisis moments have led to the expansion of the school meal programme, and of welfare more generally.
Read MoreIndia’s worst affected: the socio-economic parallels between influenza (1918-19) and Covid-19 in Mumbai
Mrunmayee Satam shows that mortality rates in the influenza epidemic of 1918-19 differed startlingly by caste in Mumbai, and the same risks remain today in the city's most congested quarters, where social distancing and self-quarantine is all but impossible
Read MoreWhen affirmative action was white: the work of Ira Katznelson
Simon Szreter revisits a classic paper from 2005 authored by Professor Ira Katznelson, which set out a history of the public policy that fostered black economic disadvantage in the United States.
Read MoreWhen black lives really did not matter
Trevor Burnard explores the shift in consciousness around the acceptibility of slavery in the mid-eighteenth century, and suggests how Britain should undertake a serious reckoning with this history.
Read MoreNot business as usual: a feminist map for the post-Covid future
Lucy Delap, D-M Withers and Margaretta Jolly on the approaches feminist thought has taken to business and sustainability, and how we can use those lessons in a post-Covid future.
Read MoreThe fall of slavery: statues, symbols and social contention
Nick Draper recounts the inertia and resistance to change that led to the fall of the Colston statue. Historians now have a complex job to do in the new terms of debate.
Read MoreEpidemics and society: plague in early modern Italy
John Henderson finds some familiar features of the current lockdown situation in early modern Italy – and some compassionate, charity-driven behaviour.
Read MoreLoosening lockdown: lessons from the blackout
The Second World War blackout offers us a close analogy to the Covid-19 lockdown, say Henry Irving and Marc Wiggam – complete with flouting of the rules, and opposition to its being lifted.
Read MoreOn VE Day: we should look to 1942 for inspiration, not the Blitz or 1945
1942 saw the nadir of the war, but also the publication of the Beveridge Report and a profound national discussion on what postwar society should be like, says Lucy Noakes. What should we change in a post-Covid future?
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