Roll call of honour

English literature professor becomes latest in line of prestigious Royal Historical Society Fellows

Professor Bill Bell has become the latest Cardiff University academic to become a RHS Fellow.

Professor of Bibliography Bill Bell specializes in nineteenth-century literature and culture and has written on the sociology of the text, the history of the book, and theories of cultural production.

He joins Dr Melanie Bigold and Professor Ceri Sullivan as Fellows from the University’s School of English, Communication and Philosophy. More than a dozen historians in the sister School of History, Archaeology and Religion are also RHS Fellows.

Fellowship is open to all whose research provides a scholarly contribution to historical knowledge, with 2023’s intake including a number of historians working in cognate disciplines in higher education such as Archaeology, the Built Environment, Art History, Museum Studies, Musicology, Philosophy and Theology.

The majority of the new Fellows hold academic appointments at universities, specialising in a very wide range of fields; with yet more museum directors and curators, librarians, heads of learned societies, heritage consultants, and independent researchers and writers.

Founded in 1868, the Royal Historical Society is the UK’s largest membership organisation for historians of all kinds and fosters an international community of historians with the 2023 intake including Fellows from twelve countries: Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

This year the RHS Council elected 110 Fellows, 59 Associate Fellows, 57 Members and 89 Postgraduate Members.