As a materials scientist, I’m interested in what can happen when new materials become available. Glass, steel and rare earth magnets are all examples of how innovation in materials science has driven technological change and, as a result, shaped global economies, politics and the environment.

Practitioners of what is often called 'histoire totale' (or ‘total history’)——have engaged with the question of contingency, determination, human agency, and change in several discernible phases.

How the Marxist notion of ‘historical materialism’ has developed is well illustrated by examining its conceptual engagement with cultural and intellectual history, which can be observed through at least two broad phases: what Anderson calls the ‘Classical Tradition’ and, later, what became known as ‘cultural Marxism’.

During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the form of dualist heresy which later became known as ‘Catharism’ remained very much alive in the south of France despite the violent attempts of the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229), and the subsequent Inquisition, to eradicate it.

Beneath the epic tales of heroes and gods, Troy’s true story is written in something far less glamorous – its rubbish.

When historians and the public think about the end of domestic slavery in west Africa, they often imagine colonial governors issuing decrees and missionaries working to end local traffic in enslaved people.

This paper covers a broad range of complex and related dynamics that collectively contributed to the conquests of Mexico and Peru by the Spanish. 

I first read John Hirst (1942-2016) as an undergraduate in the late 1990s as part of a subject on 19th-century Australian history. We discussed convict history and explored contrasting views about its role and function in the early colonies. What was life as a convict like?

This essay will address the advantages and disadvantages of historical feature films and will compare them to other representations of the past.

On Tuesday, the 4th of November, 1806, the electors of the Borough of Shrewsbury assembled in the town’s guildhall to choose their next parliamentary representatives. There were three candidates for two seats...