History & Policy

H&P promotes better public policy through a greater understanding of history. H&P is a national network of 500+ academic historians and an independent forum for the expression of historical perspectives on today’s policy issues. H&P was founded in 2002 by Cambridge scholars, Dr Alastair Reid, Fellow of Girton College, and Professor Simon Szreter, Fellow of St John’s College, together with Professor Pat Thane, Research Professor at King’s College London, and Professor Virginia Berridge, Director of the Centre for History in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. H&P is inspired by the belief that history can and should improve public policy making, helping to avoid reinventing the wheel and repeating past mistakes. 'To be ignorant of history is to be unconsciously trapped by its many influences on the present and by uncritical assumptions about the past. Those grappling with complex policy issues today need to understand how and why previous decisions were made; and to assess evidence and evaluate a range of policy options with the aid of historians' research.'