A letter that mistakenly made its way into the Freud Archives reveals hidden tensions in the history of psychoanalysis - and, as Agnes Meadows explores, in the nature of archives themselves.
For many decades, archival documents taken from the Global South by British colonial officers have been quietly available to researchers at the National Archives. Tim Livsey explores the history and questionable ethics of this "open…
How does in-access to archives provide opportunities to ask alternative questions about the past? Elisabeth Leake reflects on how personal and professional circumstances ultimately shape the histories we produce.
What is gained when 20th century Queer history is brought into the classroom? Claire Holliss discusses her experience of visiting the archive to find sources for her A-Level students.
How did Russian anarchism, Teesside socialism and Jewish phenomenology find a home in rural Essex? Ken Worpole delves into the fragile archive of an influential pacifist settlement at Frating Hall farm.
What can a gallery comments book tell us about the role radical photography can play in social change? Ruby Rees-Sheridan discusses the Half Moon Photography Workshop Comments Book as a radical object.
A speculative methodology can also be a deeply political response to the conventions of archival research, argues Sonja Boon in our Writing Radically series.
The archive has been portrayed by historians for many years as a ‘magical’ place of neutral enquiry. In fact, it has historically been used in the perpetuation of many abuses by the state and continues to play a role in privileging some…
How is the Anthropocene – the epoch in which humans have become a major force changing earth systems – changing the nature of historians' evidence base?
On Thursday 12th May 2016, the Mass Observation Archive is repeating this call for people from across the country, including readers of History Workshop Online, to submit an account of their day to the Archive.
Academics, historians and former staff and students of Ruskin College in Oxford have launched a new online archive to record and crowd-source historical information about past students, following the controversial destruction of the college…
Sinead McEneaney reviews the Women and Social Movements International reference database, published by Alexander Street Press, which contains 60,000 documents relating to women in social movements in the United States.
Liz Wood, Assistant Archivist at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, writes about the Centre's recent digitisation project for primary sources in English from the Spanish Civil War
Further information and discussion about the fate of the Women's Library, and the closure of the purpose-built, Heritage Lottery Funded building that housed the library in Whitechapel, by Laura Schwartz
Anne Summers writes about 2012's shutdowns, sales and destruction of archival resources in Britain, a year that has exceeded any pessimist’s wildest imaginings...
The personal experiences of Denise Pakeman, graduate of Ruskin College, of the destruction of archival records about working-class students from the first decades of the college
Information about the history and possible closure of the Women's and the TUC Libraries at London Metropolitan University, and how you can help the campaign
Richard Drayton, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History, Kings College London, on recent news that the British government has acknowledged the existence of a 'secret archive' from 37 former colonies, bought back to Britain after the colonies…
How 150 photographers used online communities to create a unique historical resource for the History of Advertising Trust Ghostsigns Archive. Typically faded, and dating anywhere from the late 1800s to the 1950s, these ‘ghostsigns’…
Discussion of a History Workshop Journal feature on 'Coalition Cuts', threats to archives and their repositories, urging academics, in particular, to champion libraries and archives within their own institutions
