Our Strategy, 2020-2025

What we do

The IHR champions the value and importance of history in public life and as an academic discipline. We offer training and support to the current and next generation of historians. We provide the intellectual infrastructure for historians, through ambitious collaborative research initiatives, seminar series and events, digital resources, and a 200,000 volume specialist library.

Most importantly, we act as a hub for innovation in the discipline and in interdisciplinary ways of thinking. We connect scholars, communities, policy-makers, artists, archives, libraries, museums and industry to create new forms of knowledge that speak to contemporary concerns and intellectual challenges.

We are driven by a core set of values that are central to the way we work as an organisation, how we work with others, and what we wish for the discipline as a whole. These are: curiosity, integrity, inclusivity, collaboration, care and equality.

Our future

"As the IHR begins its second century, there is an urgent need to give historians, wherever they are to be found, a home for innovation and free-thinking. The Institute is this home. It must reflect that the strength of the discipline is to be found in its diversity."

- Professor Jo Fox, Director of the IHR and Professor of Modern History at the University of London

What historians say about the IHR

Responses from the #myIHR survey, summer 2019

'The IHR is the centre of historical research in the UK.'
'The Institute provides leadership in the discipline'.
'IHR digital resources keep me up-to-date with new thinking and publications in my field'.
'The Library! It has unparalleled research content and is a great place to work.'
'The Institute hosts an amazing range of seminars, with the highest quality speakers.'
'It's the best place to meet historians of all kinds from around the country, and overseas.'
'The people I've met at the IHR have remained colleagues throughout my life.'
'The Institute's open and available to all, at every career stage, and also vitally to researchers without an affiliation.'

Our Strategy, 2020-2025

What we do

Our future

"As the IHR begins its second century, there is an urgent need to give historians, wherever they are to be found, a home for innovation and free-thinking. The Institute is this home. It must reflect that the strength of the discipline is to be found in its diversity."

What historians say about the IHR

Responses from the #myIHR survey, summer 2019

'The IHR is the centre of historical research in the UK.'

'The Institute provides leadership in the discipline'.

'IHR digital resources keep me up-to-date with new thinking and publications in my field'.

'The Library! It has unparalleled research content and is a great place to work.'

'The Institute hosts an amazing range of seminars, with the highest quality speakers.'

'It's the best place to meet historians of all kinds from around the country, and overseas.'

'The people I've met at the IHR have remained colleagues throughout my life.'

'The Institute's open and available to all, at every career stage, and also vitally to researchers without an affiliation.'