Letter From The Editors

The Editorial Board

Dear Reader,

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