Mathew Lyons

We live in an era sceptical of singularity and authority, yet attracted to narrow certainties. Might a more self-consciously subjective approach to history offer solutions, asks Mathew Lyons?

The pseudo-science of managerialism is having a pernicious effect on higher education. Radical ideas are needed if disciplines such as history are to continue to prosper, argues Mathew Lyons. 

Poorly paid and treated with contempt, the plight of early career researchers in the humanities is the result of a systemic betrayal of a generation of academics, argues Mathew Lyons.

Confronting the brutal facts of history can be difficult. But how far should we protect ourselves from them before it becomes censorship? 

Mathew Lyons argues that historians need to make a greater impact on the political debate about the kind of world we wish to live in.

How much are actions – especially extreme ones – the result of impersonal historical forces and how much are they dependent upon the impulses of individual actors? 

While we return again and again to the proto-historians of the classical world, we neglect those pioneering figures closer to us in space and time. Why is this, wonders Mathew Lyons?

Though we share a common humanity with people of the past, their world can seem alien to us, says Mathew Lyons. Was it just as disconcerting for them, too?

The struggle between certainty and doubt is at the heart of history, says Mathew Lyons. It should be relished for what it reveals about a past where facts are sometimes in short supply.