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 326 Opinion Articles listed by date and they are all freely searchable by theme, author or keyword.
Loneliness is discussed as a key effect of the pandemic, but David Vincent points out that the problem pre-dates Covid-19 and there is little evidence yet that the crisis has made things worse
Thucydides' account of the Athenian plague and its social disruption has been heavily drawn upon during today's pandemic, as Neville Morley explains. Yet Thucydides was not offering immutable laws of human behaviour – and there are aspects of today's social norms around Covid-19 that he might have approved.
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
John Henderson finds some familiar features of the current lockdown situation in early modern Italy - and some compassionate, charity-driven behaviour.
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.
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?
In a globalised world, new pathogens made their way to Britain and killed thousands, while a social security system depleted for ideological motives failed to cope. Not today, but the 1830s and 1840s, says Simon Szreter.
Supply chain inadequacies and agricultural worker shortages - the Covid crisis is highlighting the lack of a coherent and integrated national food policy, say John Martin and James P. Bowen
The terrorist threat metaphor acted as a wake-up call at the start of the crisis, says Chris Millington – but it may open the door to authoritarian measures in the name of public health security.
Christoph Laucht and Susan T. Jackson explore the language leaders deploy to map certainty onto an uncertain, frightening time - but at what cost to international co-operation, and to individual empowerment?
Page 1 of 4 pages
To subscribe to the History & Policy Opinion Articles feed in your feed reader, copy the URL and paste it in your RSS Aggregator.
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/rss
Sign up to receive announcements on events, the latest research and more!
We will never send spam and you can unsubscribe any time.
H&P is based at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, University of London.
We are the only project in the UK providing access to an international network of more than 500 historians with a broad range of expertise. H&P offers a range of resources for historians, policy makers and journalists.