History & Policy papers are written by expert historians, based on peer-reviewed research. They offer historical insights into current policy issues ranging from Afghanistan and Iraq, climate change and internet surveillance to family dynamics, alcohol consumption and health reforms. For historians interested in submitting a paper, please see the editorial guidelines.
Currently, 249 papers are freely searchable by theme, author or keyword, with new papers published regularly. Where possible, we publish papers to coincide with relevant policy developments. If you are a policy maker, civil society practitioner or journalist and would like to contact one of our historians, please contact historyandpolicy@london.ac.uk.
You can download H&P policy papers directly from the Apple iBooks store to your iPhone, iPad or Mac. We also have an Amazon Kindle version to download to your PC for transfer to your Kindle via USB cable. Please consult your Kindle manual for further details.
The out-dated notion of the "madness of crowds" persists in modern commentary on protest. Historians working on the People of 1381 project show how investigating historic protestors and their motives can strengthen policy and policing response today.
England and Scotland as independent sovereign nations within a federative union? Kirsteen M. MacKenzie explores a possible seventeenth-century model.
Thucydides is often confidently invoked as a source of timeless political principles – in reality, his narrative explores the complex, unpredictable nature of events, and the power of rhetoric
Adrian Bingham reflects on the potential impacts of granting 'Votes at 16' on the British uncertain political landscape: do sixteen year-olds have the democratic capacity (or inclination) to make informed decisions, or is this part of a wider debate about the definition of citizenship in Britain?
Mike Finn shows that a century of - more or less - academic freedom in the UK cannot be taken for granted, as the state-university relationship changes and the pressures of marketisation grow, against a backdrop of neonationalist elements entering into political discourse.
George Severs shows that since Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was repealed there has been little guidance from government on how to implement LGBT-inclusive education. It would be easier to resolve the current controversy, centring on the LGBT education programme in Birmingham schools, if the Department for Education issued new guidelines.
A well-meaning administration trying to hold governance together in the face of capriciousness at the top has one of its most instructive parallels in the late medieval English polity, as Andrew Spencer shows.
In an exciting collaboration, a contemporary historian and an Egyptologist consider the prospects for democracy in one of the world's oldest continuous states in the light of its ancient past.
Lorenzo Castellani traces the roots of the idea of the citizen as consumer of public services - an idea embraced by successive governments of different political stripes since John Major's Citizen's Charter in the early 1990s.
Andrew Blick places the history of the internet in the context of other histories of disruptive technologies and looks at the lessons for policy makers.
Page 1 of 4 pages
To subscribe to the History & Policy Policy Papers feed in your feed reader, copy the URL and paste it in your RSS Aggregator.
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/rss_2.0
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.