University’s Centre for Regional and Local History launches new research spaces

University of Leicester’s Centre for English Local History will relaunch as the Centre for Regional and Local History from Wednesday (5 October).

The name change coincides with the Centre’s move to Attenborough Tower on University of Leicester’s main campus as well as the opening of two new research spaces.

Founded in 1948, University of Leicester’s Centre for English Local History helped to establish local history as a respected academic discipline in the UK.

Since 1988, the Centre for English Local History has been based at Marc Fitch House on Salisbury Road.

Attenborough Tower holds the collections of the Centre for Urban History and part of the collections of the Centre for Regional and Local History.

The Centre will share the space with the Centre for Urban History, East Midlands Oral History Archive, and Leicestershire Victoria County History

Director of the Centre for Regional and Local History, Angela Muir said: “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 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.”