Historical research, academic politics and editorial activism*

ABSTRACT I am a passionate advocate for historical research. It provides insight, context, illuminates the dynamics of our discipline and should anchor everything we think, write, and profess in the present. Careful historical research can question, undermine, and revise the existing set of representations that underwire our subject. It may help us untangle why certain views of the subject, topic, period, or person remain in wide currency, explaining the power relations, politics, institution building and wider discursive and non-discursive factors that foreclose, enhance, or otherwise influence what we think, write, teach, and practice. We desperately need more research that challenges everything we take for granted and fail to subject to scrutiny. This paper reflects a call to action.