History scholars honoured and recognised by the Royal Historical Society

Four scholars at the University of Exeter, Cornwall, have been recognised by the Royal Historical Society (RHS) for their contributions to the fields of history and heritage.

Professor Catriona Pennell, Professor of Modern History and Memory Studies, has been elected, as one of three new members from around the UK, to the RHS Council, where she will play an active role in national-level advocacy.

Professor Bryony Onciul, Dr Jeremy DeWaal, and Professor Richard Noakes were all elected as Fellows of the RHS. All four colleagues are based in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cornwall (HaSS Cornwall) and saw their achievements announced in the latest RHS update this October.

Professor Pennell faced a competitive election process, and will now serve a four-year term on the Council, helping to shape discussions and initiatives that support the history and heritage community. Her priorities include focusing on supporting historians who find themselves in multidiscipline HE departments, like her own, and promoting the importance of History as a discipline to tackling the many global challenges society faces today.

Her decision to stand, she said, reflected a desire to “pay forward her support for the RHS”. It also follows a prestigious visit to the Penryn campus by the Society, earlier this year, when it lavished praise on the quality of research and teaching taking place in HaSS Cornwall.

“I am deeply honoured to have been elected by my peers to join the Council and am looking forward to playing an active role within it,” Professor Pennell said. “And for three other colleagues to be recognised by the RHS at the same time demonstrates not only the excellence of the academic community here, but also the publicly-engaged, civic-minded nature of our work.”

The RHS is the UK’s largest and oldest membership organisation for professional historians. The new RHS Fellows from Exeter were among an international cohort of scholars welcomed this year, including historians from Australia, China, India, Japan, and the United States of America.

Fellowships are awarded to those who have made an original contribution to historical scholarship. This typically includes authoring a book, a body of scholarly work similar in scale and impact to a book, the organisation of exhibitions and conferences, the editing of journals, and other works of public dissemination of historical research.

Professor Onciul is a Professor of Museology and Heritage Studies at HaSS Cornwall and is known for her research on topics such as community engagement, decolonising museology and heritage, and difficult histories, truth and reconciliation. She is currently delivering two international AHRC-funded research grants and is undertaking a Future Leaders Fellowship.

Dr DeWaal is a Senior Lecturer in History, specialising in the cultural and political history of Germany. Among the areas he researches are the history of place and space, concepts of tradition, and the history of emotions, and he recently published his first book on the German concept of Heimat.

Professor Noakes is an Associate Professor renowned for his work on the history of science and technology. His special interests extend to 19th and 20th century aspects of the physical sciences, telecommunications, psychic phenomena and the occult, the engagement of science and religion, and the relationship between science and literary texts.

For further information, visit the RHS website.