Blogging (French) history: conversations and reflections amongst historians

Abstract

In 2014, the French History Network Blog was launched with the aim of ‘connecting people and ideas’. Ten years later, it has shared hundreds of blog posts with many thousands of readers, covering teaching and researching French history, but also the lives and experiences of the historians involved in doing both things. To mark its tenth anniversary in December 2024, the Institute of Historical Research’s Modern French History Seminar hosted a roundtable bringing the founders into conversation with some of the most important contributors to the blog and with scholars representing new directions in the communication of French history. Contributors to the roundtable looked backwards, to the role that blogging has played in the creation of an academic community and sharing research over the last decade. But discussions also looked forwards, asking how blogging can help historians continue to communicate and connect in the face of new technologies of communication and dramatic changes to our field. Three of the contributions are collated here with an introduction; they invite readers to reflect on the function and future of blogs as a form of academic writing.