Local history society directory

Local history society directory

Find a local history organisation near you or to support your research project.

Become an individual member

Become an individual member

Be part of our network of local history researchers and enthusiasts and benefit from our quarterly publications in addition to discounts on books and events.

Become a society member

Become a society member

Receive our support, boost your profile and take advantage of the dedicated insurance scheme for societies.

Quarterly publications

Quarterly publications

The Local Historian, our academic journal, was first produced in 1952 and is considered one of the foremost local history publications. It is published four times a year in conjunction with Local History News.

Our educational work

Our educational work

BALH aims to encourage interest and enthusiasm for local history amongst learners of all ages and to share and promote best practice, knowledge and skills.

Featured member society

Featured member society

BALH member societies may now add details of their work to our website, which will be highlighted here. Contact us for further details

Why BALH?

Nick Barratt Historian and Author

Where did your ancestors live?

It is impossible to trace the history of one’s family without considering where they lived. Local history societies and one-place study groups have researched and published content that will allow you to place the lives of your ancestors in the context of their local communities, villages, towns and cities as well as some of the key socio-economic factors that lay behind their development. They often use the same sources as family historians, and can help provide an alternative interpretation of a document or suggest new resources to help your research.

Nick Barratt, Historian and Author

Meet the team

Daniella Gonzalez Trustee

Daniella Marie Gonzalez

Born and raised in Gibraltar, I came to the UK in 2010 to study a BA in History at the University of Kent and I’ve never looked back since. Upon the completion of my BA, I continued my studies at Kent undertaking an MA in Medieval and Early Modern Studies between 2013 and 2014. After taking a gap year, I returned to Kent in 2015 to pursue my PhD and passed my viva in February 2020. Funded by the Consortium for the Humanities and Arts in the South East (CHASE), my PhD, titled ‘Common Profit and Civic Governance in Ricardian London, c.1376-c.1391’, focused on political discourse and how this was expressed within civic records in Richard II’s London.

I am interested in the social, cultural and political history of late medieval London, especially understandings of medieval political theory in an urban environment. I have an interest in political language and the way this was used by London’s civic leaders to enforce their authority and negotiate the political landscape that they found themselves in, examining how ideological concerns, specifically common profit rhetoric, influenced documentary culture. Part of my research is also concerned with the relationship between monarch, civic officers and the London populace and how ideas of body politic are expressed in London’s civic records.

After completing my doctoral studies, I have taken on work in the archive sector working on local history projects for several archives. These include projects undertaken with Special Collections & Archives at the University of Kent, focusing on early modern legal documents produced in Kent between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, and, more recently, with the Gibraltar National Archives, where I’ve been transcribing eighteenth-century letter books outlining Gibraltar’s administrative history. I have a deep interest in making archival records more widely accessible to the public and am very keen to work with county archives to engage audiences with historical records and to learn more about the communities that they are a part of. As from September 2020, I will be undertaking a distance learning MA in Archives Administration at the University of Aberystwyth.

I am also a Co-founder and Editor of MEMSlib, a lockdown library created in response to the Covid-19 pandemic to assist medievalists and early modernists in carrying out their research from home (www.memslib.co.uk). Recently, I have also taken up the role of Communications Officer for the Archives and Records Association’s Section for New Professionals, which aims to support archivists and records managers in the early stages of their career.

I was honoured to join BALH as the Social Media Fellow for 2020/21, where I was responsible for BALH’s various social media platforms. This was a very exciting opportunity for me, highlighting the importance of local history and engaging wider communities with the stories of the places that they live in.

With the end of my Fellowship, I remain an active member of the BALH Outreach team.

Daniella Gonzalez, Trustee

From our archives

The Amateur Historian Volume 7 Number 3 August 1966

The Amateur Historian or Local Historian

Munby, Lionel M.

pp 78-83

A report on a recent survey of the readership of the journal which had been prompted by debate about the title - whether the word 'amateur' was now appropriate? The discussion covers the title of the journal itself, and the proposed change from The Amateur Historian to The Local Historian; the future editorial policy and the debate over 'amateur versus professional'; and readers' comments concerning possible improvements and development of the journal (see also 07 04 102-108).

The Amateur Historian Volume 7 Number 3 August 1966

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