About

Instruction and information for historians. Into your inbox every two weeks.

How-to History is here to help historians. We explain events, concepts, things, themes and sources to help with the practice of researching, writing and teaching history. Each ‘How-to’ is, usually, a short guide of under a thousand words which directs you to further resources.

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People

How-to History is run by Joe Saunders and Anna Cusack. Joe and Anna are both Associate Fellows of the Royal Historical Society.

Joe works as a freelance historical researcher (www.josephsaundershistory.co.uk) and is undertaking a part-time doctorate at the University of York. He teaches history at the University of York, the Centre for Lifelong Learning, and for the online learning provider Pharos Tutors. He is a Trustee and current Vice-Chair of the British Association for Local History, an Associate of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives and is on the editorial board of The Historian, magazine of the Historical Association. Joe is particularly interested in the histories of families, places, communities and work.

Anna holds a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London where she is an Honorary Research Fellow. She is a Lecturer in History at Bishop Grosseteste University. She has taught at the University of Essex and Canterbury Christ Church University and for the University of Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education. She works as a tutor on various London summer school programmes and for the WEA. Anna held a postdoctoral fellowship at St Mary's Twickenham in 2024 and has worked as a Research Assistant on numerous projects including the AHRC funded 'Power of Petitioning' project and projects at the Universities of Leicester, Erfurt, and The Australian National University. Her specialist areas are in early modern history and specifically the history of death, burial, crime, punishment, and execution, along with the treatment of religious outsiders. Before her academic career Anna had a career in museums and galleries and worked as a tour guide.

Write for us: We are keen to share the knowledge of fellow historians. Please email us if you are interested in writing a post: howtohistory@substack.com

Contributing authors:

Aaron Columbus completed his PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. His thesis was focused on the response to plague and the poor in the suburban parishes of early modern London. Aaron recently worked as a Teaching fellow at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington and is Deputy Principal of Teaching and Learning at Wellington College. He continues to research and write about plague in early modern London. Find him on X @columbus_aaron or email him at aaron.columbus.phd@gmail.com

Lynne Dyer. After graduating from Loughborough University, Lynne worked as a professional librarian for 40 years. A trained tour guide, in 2013 Lynne created the blog lynneaboutloughborough, to promote the town, and posts have been viewed over 550,000 times. Lynne has a local history qualification from OUDCE, and has written four books about Loughborough for Amberley. Find Lynne on X @stjerome1st and on blogger www.lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.co.uk

Rachel Glaves is a trained landscape historian and archaeologist. She has spent two years working in UK commercial archaeology. Her interests lie in British Neolithic archaeology, GIS and making archaeology accessible through community archaeology.

Jay Hancock writes about history and society. He was the diplomatic correspondent and the economics correspondent for The Baltimore Sun. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere. In 2020 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative journalism. His free Substack is here. He can be contacted on jayhancock@protonmail.com.

Jennifer Putnam is a historian and linguist. She is currently a Conny Kristel Fellow with the European Holocaust Infrastructure. Jennifer submitted her PhD thesis on graffiti in Nazi concentration camps and ghettos at Birkbeck College, University of London in August 2023. Her most recent article is entitled ‘The Struggle Against Timelessness: Prisoner Experiences of Time in Nazi Concentration Camps and Ghettos’.

Jon Rosebank is Fellow of New College, Oxford; Executive Producer BBC Documentaries and History; Head of History 11-18; writer (but not more than one of these at any time.) Now writer and presenter of History Café, revisiting historical episodes and making scholarship accessible on all podcast platforms.

Isabella Rosner is the Curator of the Royal School of Needlework and a Research Associate at Witney Antiques. She researches and cares for nearly 500 years of needlework. In 2023 she completed her PhD at King’s College London, where she studied Quaker women’s needlework, waxwork, and shellwork in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London and Philadelphia.

Lucy Jane Santos specialises in the late 19th and early 20th century and is a freelance historian examining the crossroads of health, leisure and beauty with science and technology. Lucy has appeared as a contributor on TV and radio, and her historical research has been featured by different publications including History Today and Vogue. Lucy’s debut book was Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium was shortlisted for the BSHS Hughes Prize in 2021. Her next book, Chain Reactions: The Hopeful History of Uranium, will be published in 2024. https://www.instagram.com/lucyjanesantos_/

Cora Wilson studied medieval and early modern history at Oxford University. Now she works on political literacy education. She is particularly interested in gender history, and loves to explore links (however tenuous!) between medieval and modern culture. You can read her work at https://corawilson.substack.com/.

Thanks to all those who have provided help and advice on posts and the project: Pam Smith, Natalie Pithers, Helen Shields, Wendy Tait Mayfield, Dave Annal, Kate Rose (Kresen Kernow), Peter Taylor, and Janet Barrie.