The ‘tyranny of relevance’ is a convenient and popular target for academic historians. Mention the ‘r’ word with a raised eyebrow during a conference coffee break, or condemn instrumentalist research policy at a committee meeting and you are likely to receive murmurs of sympathy.
Of the many variants that terrorism has adopted during the last two and a half centuries, I will focus on terrorism in the 21st century and its relationship to history, especially public history.
There is no doubt that, since its inception in the United States, public history has been increasingly professionalized internationally as an academic teaching and research discipline. At German universities, however, its status is still fuzzy. Although …
Social Media facilitate various forms of web communication between individuals and communities. They can bring users together to discuss common issues and to share traces of the past. Local communities’ engagement with the past …
Public History promotes social identity. This is at the same time an opportunity, a danger and a challenge. In particular actors of Public History are required to take into consideration the needs for identification […]
The Da Vinci Code was a work of fiction, but significant public interest in its claim to be drawing on a hidden history of Christianity forced agents of the Catholic Church, and scholars within the academy, to challenge the book’s historical and theological errors. …
Digital History has reshaped the documentation methods of historians, especially their means of accessing and storing history. However, this seismic shift has occurred without any thorough critical discussion of these digital tools and practices …
Public history is a tricky thing to define, its very elusiveness serving as a reason for historians to regard it with suspicion. The act of definition is problematic, however, for more important reasons than semantics. …