This masterclass explores the emerging sites of history making outside of the academy. It reflects on opportunities and limits, as well as their potentially transformative impact for the discipline.
 
Fact: universities produce more history PhDs than they do academic history jobs. 
Fact: the arts and cultural industries are among the fastest growing in the world. The US alone has seen a 13.4% growth in this sector above pre-pandemic levels.
 
No one does a PhD in history because they think they’ll get rich, but it’s likely they want to work in the field in some way. The stats paint a grim picture. In the UK 1500 postgraduate research degrees in the humanities alone were awarded in the year 2021/22. The average number of history/philosophy jobs advertised on jobs.ac.uk that year was 84. Does that mean despair and run next door to the business school? No. It means getting creative about where else history is happening and how you can get involved. 
 
In the first half of this session, Richard will share his journey in creative non-fiction publishing and reveal the pleasures and pitfalls of the commercial history writer in contrast with the monograph writer. Sophie will share her work in digital media, non-profit philanthropy, and community history making projects. In the second half, participants are invited to pitch an idea for a popular history project which Richard and Sophie will provide feedback on.

Sophie Scott-Brown is affiliated to the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews. She is well-known for her historical work on left-wing politics, especially the post-war British left. Her publications include The Histories of Raphael Samuel: A Portrait of a People’s Historian (ANU Press, 2017), Colin Ward and the Art of Everyday Anarchy (Routledge, 2022) and most recently The Radical Fifties: Activist Politics in Cold War Britain (OUP,  2024).

Richard Whatmore is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the Institute of Intellectual History. He specialises in intellectual history and his publications include Republicanism and the French Revolution (OUP, 2000), Against War and Empire (Yale University Press, 2012), What is Intellectual History? (Polity Press, 2015), Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans: The Genevans and the Irish in Time of Revolution (Princeton University Press, 2019), and The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis (Allen Lane, 2023).