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
Inside the History Lab
Big Asia: Rethinking a Region
by Sakura Christmas, Amy Stanley, Nile Green, Mustafa Tuna, Rachel Leow, Melissa Macauley, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Hyunhee Park, Ruthe Mostern, Cemil Aydin, and Sebastian Conrad
In Defense of the Search Bar
by Hannah Frydman
The Craft of Writing History with Drafting the Past: An Interview with Kate Carpenter
by Kate Carpenter and Daniel Story
#AHR Syllabus
Teaching Historical Thinking Through a Primary Source Database: Everyday Life Under Stalin
by Edward Cohn
History Unclassified
Las Que Van Quedando en el Camino (The Women Who Are Left by the Wayside): Oral History, Patriarchy, and Revolution in the Chilean Countryside
by Thomas Miller Klubock
Writing My Seven Mothers Back Together
by Pernille Ipsen
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.