Your HA Virtual Branch

Keep learning with our online programme of talks

Your branch from home

The HA Virtual Branch is a great way to keep your history up-to-date, whether you are working or relaxing, all from the comfort of your home. The Virtual Branch is free and open to everybody, and recordings of the talks are made available online after the event for HA members.

Did you know? As well as accessing session recordings, members can attend talks held by HA local branches for free, plus exclusive members' webinars and short courses, and a variety of other benefits. Find out more

Upcoming talks

*LIVE - 16 October 2024, 7.30pm 
Challenging claims that egalitarian, peaceful societies disappeared with the founding of agriculture or with the founding of state-level social organisation

Dr Alvin Finkel
Book here 

Yuval Harari has offered the view that early humans, out of necessity, lived in egalitarian, peaceful societies that represented true civilisation, standing on its head the notion that early societies were primitive and unsophisticated. His claim, however, that an ‘agricultural revolution’ wiped clean the democratic, egalitarian ideals of hundreds of thousands of human experience has been challenged by David Graeber and David Wengrow, who point out that early agricultural societies maintained the value of foraging societies. They suggest that the creation of state-level societies was the real villain in destroying the truly human values of early societies. Read more

*LIVE - 6 November 2024, 7.30pm
A recycled Renaissance? The cultural world of Elizabethan England
Professor Emma Smith
Book here 

In this talk, Professor Smith will provide a preview of her current research, which explores the lives, reads and cultural undercurrents of Elizabethan England. What was influencing their cultural tastes and how much of it was new, or had it all been seen before? Read more

*LIVE - 11 December 2024, 7.30pm
Crusader criminals
Dr Steve Tibble
Book here 

The religious wars of the Crusades are renowned for their military engagements. But the period was witness to brutality beyond the battlefield. More so than any other medieval war zone, the Holy Land was rife with unprecedented levels of criminality and violence. Read more

*LIVE - 14 January 2025, 7.30pm
The Fall: last days of the English Republic
Dr Henry Reece
Book here  

Oliver Cromwell’s death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivalled turmoil and confusion in English history. In less than two years, there were close to ten changes of government; rival armies of Englishmen faced each other across the Scottish border; and the Long Parliament was finally dissolved after two decades. Why was this period so turbulent, and why did the republic, backed by a formidable standing army, come crashing down in such spectacular fashion? In this talk, Dr Reece will address some of these questions. Read more

Past lecture recordings

If you've missed any of our previous Virtual Branch talks, HA members can access recordings below. Not already a member? Join today

Speaker

Title & link

Date recorded

Sharon Bennett Connolly

Women of the Anarchy

July 2024

Professor Henrietta Harrison

The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 

June 2024

Harry Freedman

Shylock's Venice: The remarkable history of Venice’s Jews and the Ghetto

May 2024

Professor Judith Green

From Pirates to Princes: the Normans in Eleventh-Century Europe

April 2024

Dr Joanne Paul

The House of Dudley

March 2024

Dr Mark Williams

The East India Company and Empire: Foundations and Memory

February 2024

Professor David Carpenter

King Henry III and Simon de Montfort: Reform, Rebellion and Civil War in England 1258-1265

January 2024

Dr Steve Tibble

The British Templars: From Crusaders to Conspiracies

December 2023

Christina J. Faraday

Tudor Liveliness? Discovering Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England

November 2023

Jasmine Calver

The Connected and Competing Activisms of the Women's World Committee against War and Fascism

October 2023

Levi Roach

Empires of the Normans

September 2023

Paul Clammer

Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom

July 2023

Professor Erik Linstrum

Age of emergency: living with violence at the end of the British Empire

June 2023

Dr Nicholas Morton

The survival strategies of the Near Eastern powers facing Mongol invasion

May 2023

Dr Fitzroy Morrissey

A short history of Islamic thought

April 2023

Dr Gabrielle Storey

Berengaria of Navarre: History and Myth

March 2023

Professor Jan Rüger

Heligoland: What a small island in the North Sea tells us about the Anglo-German past

Feb 2023

Professor John Blair

Building Anglo-Saxon England

Jan 2023

Dr Nicholas J Evans

Death in diaspora

Dec 2022

Professor Malcolm Gaskill

The Ruin of all Witches: Life and Death in the New World

Nov 2022

Dr Peter Hounsell

Bricks and the making of the city: London in the nineteenth century

Oct 2022

Professor Richard Toye

Churchill's Great Game: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War

Sept 2022

Dr Nicola Clark

Seen but not heard? The ladies-in-waiting who served the six wives of Henry VIII

Aug 2022

Judith Herrin

Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe

June 2022

Dean Irwin

A Jewish divorce case in medieval England

May 2022

Bob Morris

Why has monarchy survived in Europe?

Apr 2022

Marcus Collins

“The Talk Should Not Be Broadcast”: Homosexuality and the BBC before 1967

Mar 2022

Paula Kitching

Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?

Feb 2022

Anna Cusack

What a strange place to be buried: Unique burial locations in London, c. 1600-1800

Jan 2022

Karin Friedrich

The Partitions of Poland, their Repercussions for German-Polish Relations and their Legacy

Dec 2021

Robert Sackville-West

The Searchers: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War

Nov 2021

Robert Pike

Silent Village: Life and Death in Occupied France

Oct 2021

Toby Green

West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution

July 2021

Marc Morris

Meet the author: Marc Morris on the Anglo-Saxons

June 2021

Martyn Whittock

Mayflower Lives: building a New Jerusalem in the New World

May 2021

Clare Kennan

Building St James's Spire: Louth's Guilds and Popular Piety in the Later Middle Ages 

April 2021

Stephen Bourne

Writing Black British histories

March 2021

Jonathan Phillips

The life and legend of Sultan Saladin

Feb 2021

Rana Mitter

China's good war: how World War II is shaping a new nationalism 

Feb 2021

Katja Hoyer

Weltkrieg: the German home front during World War I

Jan 2021

Anne Curry

Anne Curry: Henry V – Henry the conqueror

Jan 2021

Peter Mandler

The Origins of Mass Society: Speech, Sex and Drink in Urbanising Britain, 1780-1870

Oct 2020

Jo Fox

Reimagining the Blitz Spirit: the mobilisation of World War II propaganda in our own times

Aug 2020

Michael Wood

The Making of Early England 500-1066

July 2020

 

Local HA Branches

The HA has over 45 local branches around the country. Some of these have been able to return to their venues for their monthly talks. Others have decided to make their branch programmes online via Zoom – this provides a wonderful opportunity for you to see some of the great lectures that occur across the country as part of the HA. Check our branch calendar for full listings.

If you're a teacher don't forget that we also run our regular calendar of CPD events - view the secondary webinar calendar here and the primary calendar here.

Other events coming up

View out full Historian events calendar