The RHS Prothero Lecture: Peter Frankopan, 3 July 2024

In this year’s Prothero Lecture, Peter Frankopan will ask what is global history; should historians think globally – and is it even possible to do so? How does macro-history fit alongside microhistories and regional and periodic specialisations; and what do these questions mean for the teaching of history at school and university?

In a wide-ranging lecture that will include examples from Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley, from Mesoamerica and the Classic Maya period to the ages of the Silk Roads, Professor Frankopan will talk about the problems of traditional periodisation and regionalisation and show how global history can be instructive and helpful from teaching at primary school level to high-level academic research to public history.

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The RHS Prothero Lecture is followed, from 8.00pm, by the Society’s Annual Summer Party at Mary Ward House. The Society's annual summer party is an opportunity for historians to meet together and to speak with members of the Society's Council. All lecture attendees are warmly welcome to join us for the party after the Prothero Lecture.

is Professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he is Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. He is also Professor of Silk Roads Studies and a Bye-Fellow at King's College, Cambridge.

Peter is co-host of a new podcast produced by Goalhanger Productions and Wondery alongside Afua Hirsch called Legacy. Launched at the end of 2023, Legacy looks at the lives of some of the extraordinary men and women who have ever lived - and ask whether they have the reputations they deserve.

His publications include(Bloomsbury, 2015), (2018) and (2023). Silk Roads was named The Daily Telegraph's History Book of the Year 2015 and was lauded as one of the 'Books of the Decade' 2010-20 by the Sunday Times. His latest book, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, was named History Book of the Year by The Times in 2023. His books have have been translated into forty languages.

First given in 1968, the Prothero Lecture is one of the high points of the Society's annual events programme. The Prothero Lecture, named after George W. Prothero (President of the Society, 1901-05), has featured some of the world's leading historians. Former Prothero Lecturers include Joanna Bourke, Linda Colley, Roy Foster, Olwen Hufton, Sujit Sivasundaram, Brenda E. Stevenson and Keith Thomas.

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