A few years ago, I collaborated with some other teachers rounded up via Twitter to produce display materials for a ‘Historian of the Month’ display. Between us, we put together profiles of eleven different historians that could be used as a school display. The format was simple but formulaic –

• Slide 1 – a short biography
• Slide 2 – some notable quotes
• Slide 3 – ‘Find out more’ – recommendations for further reading; run downs of particular interests or controversies
• Slide 4 – potentially a review of a specific book

If you’d like to access these original presentations, they are together on a Google Drive here.

Yesterday I had a great discussion with my colleague and friend Kate Smee, mainly around the Black Lives Matter movement and what we are doing as educators to tackle systemic racism. Kate reminded me about this display project when we were discussing Black History Month, as she is hoping to have a display of BAME historians and historians specifically focused on BAME history within the Humanities department next October. Representation is important.

So, this seems like a good time to reinvigorate the project, so that we can share the workload and spread the word as widely as possible. While the original project aimed to have a balance of genders, it is definitely not ethnically balanced and that’s something we can address in this next round. I’m going to do a call on Twitter but leave a comment if you’d like to offer a historian’s profile too and I will be in touch.