

News
Letter From the Editors
Welcome to a very special issue of EPOCH magazine, marking our twentieth edition. From the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War to the 800th anniversary of the definitive issue of Magna Carta, 2025 is a year replete with major historical anniversaries that will be commemorated the world over. Closer to home, however, the June issue marks an important milestone for EPOCH. As well as twenty issues, this month we celebrate the fifth anniversary of our founding. Half a decade has passed since an intrepid group of postgraduate researchers from the History Department at Lancaster University boldly set forth to establish a new magazine in the uncertain days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lasting five years is no mean feat: EPOCH has served a longer tenure than thirty-two British Prime Ministers, 111 Popes, eight Ottoman Sultans, and forty-five Watford Football Club managers. In the meantime, the magazine has grown from strength to strength, evolving and developing into a recognised platform for emerging historians to publish their work in an engaging and accessible format. To mark the occasion, you can read reflections from the ghosts of Editors past in our anniversary feature, 'EPOCH Turns Five'. We would also like to take a moment to thank our departing Medieval Editor and former Chairperson, Ed Moore, as he leaves EPOCH to focus on submitting his thesis. Ed has been a member of EPOCH for several years, including overseeing a period of substantial transition in October 2024, and he leaves with our very best wishes. No-one ever truly leaves EPOCH, however, and so we are delighted to welcome back former Editors Amy Louise Smith, Karianne Robinson, and Dabeoc Stanley. All three have returned to EPOCH in a supporting capacity, while Vincent Kennedy, David Gott, Greg Florez, Rob Campbell-Roscoe, and Jimjyeong-Kim have joined the Editorial Board to help produce Issue 20. This gives the issue a distinct feel of transition and renewal, with the experience of long-serving familiar faces meeting the enthusiasm of a new cohort of historically minded postgraduates. This is, we think, the perfect way to celebrate five years of EPOCH. But EPOCHstalgia is not the theme of Issue 20. Instead, it centres on patterns of Power and Resistance through a range of historical periods, regions, and topics. It features returning contributors Siddhant Joshi, Josh Coulthard, and Hirohito Tsuji, who explore the entanglement of colonialism with the turbulent birth of Bangladesh, the complex politics of Plantagenet petitionary culture, and the contested histories of Japanese imperial dynasties respectively. Anne Moorhouse provides an incisive review of the British Library's exhibition on Medieval Women and Cian Lynch returns with a thoughtful reassessment of the role of trawlers in the maritime history of the Great War. Beyond these shores, Rebeka Erdelyiova introduces us to queer periodicals in Czechoslovakia, while our very own Aimée Wilkinson offers a critical reappraisal of female philosophers in Ancient Greece and Rome. A host of other fascinating articles from historians based at a range of international institutions completes a varied and exciting issue, which we hope you will enjoy exploring. Whilst we’re on the theme of commemoration, later this month, we will also be celebrating the thirtieth anniversary edition of the Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference, which has been offering postgraduate historians a welcoming environment to present their work since 1995. We look forward to supporting LHPC once again this year and meeting EPOCH contributors past, present, and future. In the meantime, submissions are now open for Issue 21 on the theme of ‘Heritage and Memory’. There really is no time like the present to submit your work, join an ever-growing cohort of contributors, and help shape the next five years of EPOCH. Sincerely, The Editorial Board
Upcoming Events
25-27th June 2025
LHPC 2025
The Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference (LHPC) is an annual academic conference for postgraduate researchers and early career researchers working on all periods of history and topics of historical interest. Hosted at Lancaster University since 1995, LHPC provides a friendly and supportive environment for postgraduate researchers to present high quality academic work. It has welcomed international speakers from all around the world and invites paper submissions from a wide range of disciplines.
2025’s LHPC will be exploring ‘Lived Histories: Peoples and Cultures’. Continuing the model set by previous LHPC conferences, we welcome papers from all disciplines, provided they are historical in focus. In today's modern world, it is more important than ever to offer diverse and inclusive histories, as disciplinary divisions continue to reproduce colonial hierarchies in academic research. Academics from all disciplines are therefore invited to participate, thereby enabling the conference to bring together history with other academic fields.
This year’s conference will be held on 25th-27th June 2025. We are welcoming abstracts for papers with a deadline of 20th April 2025. We also welcome panel submissions as long as they have a coherent theme.
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Details for 2025 are still being worked out but visit their Twitter/X, Bluesky and Instagram for all the latest information.
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Past Event
29-30th June 2024
LHPC 2024
The Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference (LHPC) is an annual academic conference for postgraduate researchers and early career researchers working on all periods of history and topics of historical interest. Hosted at Lancaster University since 1995, LHPC provides a friendly and supportive environment for postgraduate researchers to present high quality academic work. It has welcomed international speakers from all around the world and invites paper submissions from a wide range of disciplines.
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LHPC 2024 was lead by Jude Rowley, Anna Drury, and Debra Kontowtt, with support from Zech Bates, Georgia Deeley-Bull, Ben Goodstadt, and India Sidhu.
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Read our recap of LHPC 2024 here.
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Past Event
29-30th June 2023

LHPC 2024
The Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference (LHPC) is an annual academic conference for postgraduate researchers and early career researchers working on all periods of history and topics of historical interest. Hosted at Lancaster University since 1995, LHPC provides a friendly and supportive environment for postgraduate researchers to present high quality academic work. It has welcomed international speakers from all around the world and invites paper submissions from a wide range of disciplines. The 2023 theme is 'Continuity and Change'.
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LHPC 2023 was lead by Will Garbett, Angelina Andreeva, Ollie Garvey, and Abby Masangya.
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Read Will's recap of LHPC 2023 here.
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Past Event
10 October 2023

Pub quiz in aid of Morcambe Bay Foodbank
EPOCH is running a quiz in support of Morecambe Bay Foodbank at the Boot & Shoe pub (Scotforth Road, Lancaster). The quiz will be open to everyone, we only ask that you contribute to our food drive. Arrive at 7:30pm for a prompt 8pm start.
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Past Event
27-28th June 2022

LHPC 2022
The Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference (LHPC) is an annual academic conference for postgraduate researchers and early career researchers working on all periods of history and topics of historical interest. Hosted at Lancaster University since 1995, LHPC provides a friendly and supportive environment for postgraduate researchers to present high quality academic work. It has welcomed international speakers from all around the world and invites paper submissions from a wide range of disciplines. The 2022 theme is 'Movements and Transitions'.
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LHPC 2022 was lead by Alex Rome Griffin, Amy Stanning, Dabeoc Stanley, Will Garbett, and Ed Moore.
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Here from the organisers of LHPC 2022 here.
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Past Event
28 March 2022

EPOCH Writing Summit
The Summit is aimed at postgraduate students in the Arts and Humanities interested in advancing their writing skills.
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Writing for a multitude of audiences is an invaluable skill for students, whether they foresee a career in academia or not. The EPOCH Writing Summit brings together writers and academics, including Sunday Times bestselling author Marc Morris, to help us think about audience, style, tone, and the treatment of history.
The Writing Summit will offer students from across the globe practical training in public engagement by facilitating writing workshops and seminars that explore how specialist research can permeate public spheres. The summit will bring together experts in a number of fields, including popular history, to examine the skills necessary to restructure written research in order to disseminate critical innovation in the humanities across these genres.
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Find out more about the Writing Summit here.
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Past Event
17-18th June 2021

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Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference, 'Histfest', is an annual academic postgraduate conference hosted by the history community at Lancaster University. 'Histfest' is organised by PhD students in the department, and is designed to provide a supportive and constructive space for students and ECRs to present their work.
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The conference has run since 1995, and in 2020, we celebrated our 25th anniversary. Sadly, the conference did not take place as planned due to the COVID-19 crisis, but we are back for 2021 and determined to make it the best one yet!​
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LHPC 2021 was organised by Meredith Guthrie and team.
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Visit https://www.lhpconference.com/ for more information.
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