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On 5 October 2022, the Centre for Regional and Local History will celebrate the launch of our new name and new research spaces.

Founded in 1948, English Local History helped to establish local history as a respected academic discipline in the UK. In 1988, ELH moved to Marc Fitch House at 3-5 Salisbury Road, which we shared with the Centre for Urban History. In 2022, following a consultation process, and with a view to reflect better our broad geographical and thematic interests, we are relaunching under our new name and in our new research and library space in the Attenborough Tower as ‘The Centre for Regional and Local History’.

This rebranding coincides with the Centre’s move from Marc Fitch House to the Attenborough Building on the main campus. The Centre for Regional and Local History now shares the eight floor of the Attenborough building with our colleagues in the Centre for Urban History, East Midlands Oral History Archive, and Leicestershire Victoria County History, all of whom have also relocated from Marc Fitch House. Regional and Local History has two new library spaces for use by research students and colleagues: Attenborough 802 holds the collections of the Centre for Urban History and part of the Regional and Local History collections, and there are study desks for library users. On the first floor of the Attenborough seminar block, room 101 houses the remainder of our library collections, as well as a ‘flexible use’ seminar/research space.

The new name reflects the Centre for Regional and Local History’s strategic purpose, which is to teach and research history at the highest academic level through the lens of local studies. Under our new name, we will continue to extend the our academic reputation as the leading interdisciplinary research unit in the UK for the study of comparative local history by maintaining our broad chronological coverage (early medieval to modern), widening our geographical remit, and strengthening our commitment to landscape and environmental history, geography, archaeology, and social, cultural and gender history. We are also developing more diverse approaches to regional and local history by supporting research into Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic local histories, as well as histories of rural racism and exclusion. We are keen to hear from with colleagues across the University whose research interests intersect with our own.

News archive

Spotlight on the Centre

A conference organised by the Friends of the Centre for English Local History. Saturday 24 February 2018 at the Museum Studies Building, 19 University Road, Leicester.

Congratulations to one of the Centre's M3C students, Nicola Blacklaws, December 2017

Nicola has been awarded the Midland History Prize for her article- 'Old' and 'new' welfare: the Poor Law and social housing in Leicestershire, c.1925-1929

Local Population Studies Conference

Held on the theme of Population and Transport at the University of Leicester on 11 November 2017. It was co-organised by the Local Population Studies Society and the Friends of the Centre for English Local History.

Friends of ELH Trip to Staffordshire

The Friends took an excursion into Staffordshire, which included visits to the Stoke Museum and Gallery, and the Gladstone Pottery Museum on Saturday 23 September 2017. 

Hoskins Day 2017

Professor Dawn Hadley of the University of Sheffield, 2.30pm on Saturday 24 June 2017 in Ken Edwards LT1; on 'From Tents to Townhouses': The Viking Great Army and the Origin of the Borough of Torksey.

Charnwood Roots Heritage Festival

The Charnwood Roots Heritage Festival, Beaumanor Hall, Woodhouse, Sunday 21 May 2017.

Congratulations to one of the Centre's M3C students, Bethany Marsh, December 2016

Bethany has been awarded the Midland History Prize for her article ‘Lodging the Irish’: an exploratory study of refugee activity and local charity in Nottinghamshire, 1641-1651.

Exploring Leicestershire's History, Saturday 19 November 2016

Speakers included Dr Julie Attard, Dr Joe Harley, Dr Susan Kilby, Dr Pam Fisher and Delia Richards.

New History Lab, 4.30pm, Friday 28 October 2016, ATT002

Professor Steven Gunn, ‘Everyday Life and Accidental Death in Sixteenth-Century England’. 

'Battle-Scarred' Exhibition: Frontier, issue 3 (2016)

The work of Centre staff, honorary fellows and students has been showcased on pp. 26-29 of the autumn issue of the University's Postgraduate Research Magazine Frontier.

English Local History Graduate appointed to Fellowship, 8 October 2016

Nathan Murphy of Saratoga Springs, Utah, has been named the 165th Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. Nathan undertook his MA in ELH back in 2004 and wrote his dissertation on indentured servants in mid seventeenth-century Devon.

Spotlight on the Centre Conference, Saturday 27 February 2016

Speakers included Keith Snell, Susan Kilby, Ian Bailey, Kevin Schurer, Hannah Worthen, Matt Tompkins, Katie Bridger and Steven King.