A couple of days, ago, over dinner, I had an interesting discussion with some fellow PhD students about why we do historical research and who we think will benefit from our efforts.
It turns out that over the past few months, many of the articles and books I read for my research ended up pointing me to similar questions, in particular about contemporary history. What is the current state of that field? What are the particular challenges of writing contemporary history today? How does (or doesn’?) contemporary history relate to neighbouring disciplines, in particular of the social sciences? Finally, how can we as historians use these scholars’ interpretations of and from the period that we study, and what can we add to their descriptions of past reality?

When working in the archives for days and weeks on end, it is important to stop and think about what one hopes to achieve with one’s work.
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