1. Surveying public history stakeholders

This imperative animated a staff–student research project that we—Lilac Marsh, a third-year English student, and David Geiringer, a lecturer in public history—recently conducted at the Queen Mary University of London (funded by the QMUL HSS Student Research Bursary Scheme). We ran an online survey in the first 3 months of 2024 that investigated how those with a self-avowed role in public history—students, lecturers, and heritage professionals—understood “the public.”Footnote ⁴ We recruited participants from across the United Kingdom through a targeted email campaign, identifying key academics and professionals involved in public history and asking them to disseminate the survey to students and colleagues within their networks. This snowballing process garnered 50 responses in total, a self-selecting sample, as is almost always the case for this sort of research, but a sample composed of respondents who clearly felt invested in public history. Working as co-researchers with differing positions in relation to public history was particularly useful when co-designing the survey questions (Appendix). David, as a “expert” in public history with the term in his professional title, was well-versed in the, ironically not so public-facing, theories of the field, but this familiarity held the potential to encourage leading questions and obscure wider perspectives. Lilac, as a student from a different discipline who consumed history both within and beyond her degree, brought a different set of questions and experiences surrounding public history. These contrasting but complementary positions allowed for a more nuanced approach to both the generation and analysis of qualitative data.

Historians have recently become interested in the intellectual work that the term “public” does. For example, Alex Mold et al. ask, “who are the publics in public health?”Footnote ⁵ In our project, we wanted to better understand what happens when the word “public” is attached to “history.” The responses offer an insight into not only the values and assumptions that underpin public history as a field of knowledge but also the power dynamics that shape its practice. Here, we reflect on two key themes that emerged from the responses: inclusion and positionality. These words are widely used across the various institutions involved in public history but are often freighted with different meanings and motivations.

2. The illusions of inclusion?

The lack of inclusion within the history and heritage workforces is now receiving long overdue attention. A recent survey by Historic England has indicated that over 90% of the workforce in heritage identify as white, while less than 1% identify as Black or Black British.Footnote ⁶ Similarly, a 2018 Royal Historical Society Report on race, ethnicity, and equality found that 93.7% of academic historians are white, with 1.5 identifying as Black.Footnote ⁷ Strategies are being employed to redress this lack of diversity, with varying levels of success, but it remains more difficult to measure the inclusivity of public history outputs, collaborations, and audiences. The “public” component of public history is less amenable to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI—an ordering more favoured in UK contexts than DEI in the United States) evaluation tools.

The responses to our survey suggest that while the different groups shared a commitment to imagining the public in the broadest possible sense, in practice, they engaged with very different groups. Academics and students both tended to speak confidently about their work in engaging “disenfranchised,” “underrepresented,” and “minoritised” groups in their public history work:

This capacity to work with underrepresented and disadvantaged groups in research-led contexts reflects a level of autonomy amongst those working in universities. By comparison, heritage workers spoke of their interest in reaching disadvantaged communities, but were also candid about the demographic profile of the publics they engaged:

Heritage workers were conscious of how the financial demands and cultural identity of the heritage sector shaped the publics they engaged with, as exemplified by the acquisitive language used here: “To me, the ‘public’ in public history is the target audience.” Those working in Higher Education appeared to enjoy greater levels of autonomy in selecting the types of public they engaged with.

Inclusion was identified as a major issue for all those involved in public history. Many acknowledged that not enough was being done to broaden the voices and stories being platformed:

There was a tendency amongst the different groups to label other groups as being less inclusive. In response to a question about whether public history was inclusive, some academic participants pointed the finger at heritage organisations:

We found that some heritage professionals claimed the exact opposite:

One academic respondent identified “public archaeology” as the main culprit:

This sense of competition between different sectors of public history tells us something about the marketisation of inclusivity agendas within the creative industries. Claims to inclusion are a vital source of cultural capital, with programmes such as the gender equality framework Athena Swan measuring EDI-related metrics and offering a badge of honour for academic institutions. The recent Trumpian attacks on DEI have garnered much attention, but it is important to note that the neoliberal logics of ranking and competition have structured the way public history stakeholders frame inclusion for a while now.

3. Anyone but us—self-exclusion from “the public”

One common trait amongst participants from all three groups was a tendency to define the public as anyone but themselves. Consider these typical responses to the question: “Who do you think are the publics in public history?”:

These participants see their historical expertise as precluding their inclusion in the public in public history. This suggests a sense of intellectual humility and self-awareness, a consciousness of the power they hold as authors and arbiters of historical knowledge. For some participants, this was tied up with their economic relationship to public history. One academic participant explained that they became a part of “the public” when the history no longer related to their professional work:

It is clear that financial remuneration influenced the way the participants positioned themselves in relation to the public. There seems to be an intriguing paradox at the heart of public history—many dedicate themselves to public history because they believe that history should include a broader public, but exclude themselves from their definition of the public. While the reasons for this self-exclusion may be virtuous, it is perhaps worth reflecting on the implications. A recent study of public history blogging suggests that history students tend to view their target “public” as themselves—young people who tend not to engage with public history and heritage content.Footnote ⁸

4. Reimagining the publics in public history

There have been widespread calls to improve inclusion in public history and heritage, and indeed we are seeing the production of new resources, such as The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook, aimed at this end, but little analysis of what inclusion actually means in these contexts.Footnote ⁹ Our research suggests that, rather than assuming a unified, coherent understanding of inclusive practice, there is a need for more open dialogue between different stakeholders about the various publics they engage. Knowledge exchange between archivists and historians is common, such as the collaboration between the Institute for Historical Research and the National Archives History and Archives in Practice. Integrating public history students and teachers into these discussions would be a useful starting point for thinking about how the very category of the “public” can be usefully reimagined. Equally, thinking across disciplinary lines to engage with other organising categories such as the “public humanities” will help disrupt siloed working practices and the logics of competition. Jane Moody has suggested that those working in “heritage” and “history” should recognise their role as social actors in the processes that constitute the other.Footnote ¹⁰ There is a need for a reflexive approach amongst public history stakeholders, calling into question clear lines between the producers of history for the public and public consumers of history. At a moment when “public history” has ascended to a position of cultural and educational authority, it is time to think critically, creatively, and collaboratively about the effect that these two words have on each other.