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Being a historian

My identity as an historian was something I struggled with throughout my undergraduate degree. I thought I needed 2 or 3 words that perfectly described my interests and research and how I conduct it. I’ve come to learn that there are indeed occasions where this is useful, but my wonderful social scientist (and academic) mother always reminded me of the value of not putting yourself in a box. I instead found it easier to qualify myself as the things I »å¾±»å²Ô’t find as interesting: school left me tired of early-modern histories, and core modules at UG left me uninterested in national and political histories. Thus, when my Masters came around, conveniently titled MA Global History, I jumped at the opportunity to use the tools this provided to give my identity as an historian something concrete as a label. It was here that I began to learn what ‘doing’ global history really meant. It wasn’t that I just enjoyed history that went beyond the British perspective, it was about the connections and perspectives and methodologies. [1] Our core module exposed us to a variety of ways through which you could ‘do’ global history: migration, pandemics, food, micro vs. macro, decolonialisation, and knowledge movement, to name just a few. I was also one of three people to do a module on social networks, which has since become a foundational tool in my research. I left my Masters confident that global history was the way to go, my ‘box’/identity.

Considering how assured I had become during my Masters, it took me by a great deal of surprise to hear at my first GHCC meeting that global history as a discipline had some loud critics. According to some teaching staff, some new students do not like the term and shrink away from identifying as such; perhaps it is telling that there were only eight of us on my Masters course, and it now no longer exists.

Criticisms to the limits of global history and the rise of new historiographical approaches has been something historians themselves have been discussing for some time now. Indeed, one of the first things we read during my MA was Jeremy Adelman’s What is global history now? [2] Adelman argued that in trying to go beyond the confines of history within (geographical/political) borders, global history’s lack of locality became exclusionary. In focusing on the stories of connection and communication, you may exclude those that did not experience these phenomena. To some historians, Adelman’s article was a premature eulogy to a discipline that had become a victim of its own ethos. [3]

In a rather full circle moment, the first contribution to this blog was by my now supervisor, reflecting on Adelman’s discussion with a GHCC Reading Group. Here, Adelman denied his article was about the ‘end’ of global history. The Reading Group in fact reached the conclusion that it still had a definitively ‘fruitful future’.[4] So maybe we are not witnessing the decline of global history after all?

Perhaps current students are questioning global history in the same way I questioned military and economic histories during my undergraduate degree, such are the natural trends in discipline popularity. Alternatively, are we seeing the rise of the next ‘it’ moment in environmental history? Certainly, non-human histories have grown in popularity over the past few years. [5] This does not mean, however, that these sub-disciplines exist in isolation. The cross-over is certainly evident – the 2026 GHCC conference is on non-human agency. A key strength of global history is its interdisciplinarity.

Doing global history now

Returning to my trajectory/identity, I began my PhD journey, as many do: feeling as though the potential lines of inquiry were endless, and my reading list was only getting bigger. The guidance of my supervisors has been invaluable, particularly in highlighting pools of literature I may not have been aware of. Yet, it was also easy to feel overwhelmed with recommendations; all of a sudden I was reading as an historian of science, and of book publishing, and of Victorian society, and of travel writing – a lot of historiographies and methods that were unfamiliar. Thus, when it came to handing in my first pieces of work, I had to remind myself to start with what I knew.

In my case, this was networks (though it’s worth noting that even networks are not without their critics [6]). Network analysis led me to histories of organisations beyond my niche focus, the Hakluyt Society. This created opportunities to engage with historians who studied learned societies in a broader sense. Studying networks also led me to biographical histories of Hakluyt Society members, financial analysis of Society records, and the intrinsic nature of coloniality in Victorian intellectual circles. This has paved the way for my current work-in-progress: a prosopography of the Hakluyt Society, which could be the first of its kind. I also take advantage of the research centres here at Warwick. I am a member of GHCC and attend CHMST sessions. I take part in seminar discussions on science and the environment, and collaborate closely with researchers in the Wheeler programme of travel writing. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, I am now more comfortable with my identity as an historian being fluid, or ever-expanding.

My hope in this blog was to reassure others that feeling uncertain about identity or ‘place’ at the start of a PhD is entirely normal. Start with what you know, before you worry about all the things you don’t. And if all else fails, embrace the interdisciplinarity of global history!

References

[1] Perhaps ironically, my project now is about the British sphere of influence.

[2] Jeremy Adelman, ‘What is global history now?’, Aeon [2/3/2017] <>

[3] Richard Drayton and David Motadel, ‘Discussion: the future of global history’, Journal of Global History 13:1 (2018) pp.1-3.

[4] Guillemette Crouzet and Guido van Meersbergen, ‘Jeremy Adelman, ‘What is Global History Now’ – Global History Reading Group’ GHCC Blog [8/11/2017] </fac/arts/history/ghcc/blog/jeremy_adelman_what/>

[5] There are several historians specialising in the environment and the non-human in the department now.

[6] David A. Bell, ‘This is what happens when historians overuse the idea of the network’, The New Republic [26/10/13] <>

Bibliography

Adelman, Jeremy, ‘What is global history now?’, Aeon [2/3/2017] <> [accessed 4/4/2026]

Bell, David A., ‘This is what happens when historians overuse the idea of the network’, The New Republic [26/10/13] <> [accessed 7/5/2026]

Conrad, Sebastian, What Is Global History? (Princeton, 2016)

Crouzet, Guillemette and Guido van Meersbergen, ‘Jeremy Adelman, ‘What is Global History Now’ – Global History Reading Group’ GHCC Blog [8/11/2017] </fac/arts/history/ghcc/blog/jeremy_adelman_what/> [accessed 24/2/2026]

Drayton, Richard and David Motadel, ‘Discussion: the future of global history’, Journal of Global History, 13:1 (2018), 1-21

Gänger, Stefanie, ‘Circulation: reflections on circularity, entity, and liquidity in the language of global history’ Journal of Global History, 12:3 (2017), 303-318

van Ittersum, Martine and Jaap Jacobs, ‘Are We All Global Historians Now? An Interview with David Armitage’, Itinerario, 36:2 (2012), 7-28