About the AHR History Lab
The History Lab launched in March 2022 as an experimental space driven by a single question: how can the AHR help reimagine the practice of history in the 21st century? The kinds of field-shaping interventions our authors make in the Lab involve collaborative projects designed to showcase transformative approaches to new methods and fields in history, to reinvigorate more familiar realms of historical study and to expand the public facing reach of our historical practices. The forms that Lab projects take reflect the AHA’s recent Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship and its concerns with demonstrating “a wide range of scholarly historical work can be undertaken in ways consistent with our disciplinary standards and values.”
All History Lab pieces undergo peer review and contributions to the Lab each receive a DOI to enhance searchability. They are also logged as research articles in our publisher Oxford University Press’s metadata. With one of the highest impact factors for history journals in the world, the American Historical Review and the pathbreaking work that appears in the curated space of its Lab take innovative new historical scholarship to a growing audience in and out of the academy.
The History Lab also contains two subsections:
- The History Unclassified section, located within the History Lab, features essays that are creative, unconventional, genre-bending modes of historical writing.
- #AHRSyllabus is a collaborative project designed to help teachers and students look "under the hood" at how historians in the early 21st century do the work of history.
For information on how to submit to the History Lab, visit our submissions page.
In The Latest Issue
History Unclassified
Mistakes I Dare Not Admit
by Kate Brown and Emily Callaci
Mistakes I Carried: Building Strength in a Time of Crisis
by Conor Heffernan
Whose Revolution? Revisiting Historical Categories
by Lisa Pinley Covert
Battles Over Addiction Treatment
by Claire D. Clark
"The Rooster Says There is Life in Fear": State Terror, Open Silences, and Historical Memory in Togo
by Marius Kothor
Embracing the Untamed Garden
by Claire Schen and Maddy Cherr
Slipping from the Podium
by Michael Kugler, Kelli Y Nakamura, and Julie D. Rancillo
The Chernobyl Crucible in Two Acts
by Kate Brown
#AHRSyllabus
Unpacking the History of Higher Education
by Kelly Schrum, Nate Sleeter
For more #AHRSyllabus modules and History Unclassified essays, visit the #AHRSyllabus page and History Unclassified page.
AHR History Lab Submissions
The AHR History Lab invites collaborative teams to develop innovative projects that create new historical knowledge and speak to expansive audiences. History Lab projects involve practitioners of history from across the discipline, including academics, teachers, digital humanists, archivists, community activists, museum curators, documentarians and filmmakers, writers, poets, musicians, composers, and visual artists. The results of their work appear in both the print and digital editions of the AHR.
History in Focus Podcast
Listen to recent episodes with authors of AHR History Lab pieces.