![[The University of Leicester]](unilogo.gif)
English local history: the Leicester Approach
The birthplace of the academic discipline that's still reshaping our view of the place in which we live
The University of Leicester has strong claim as the birthplace of English local history as an academic discipline. WG Hoskins, the founder of the subject at Leicester, was a pioneer whose book The Making of the English Landscape has the power to inspire readers today. Indeed the Leicester Approach to English local history is still very much at the cornerstone of its academic study.
Hoskins and his successors established the principles of this approach; that local history can only be understood by reference to landscape, countryside and topography; that place needs to be understood over decades if not centuries; and that traditional historical research methods must be fused with the study of local archaeology, literature, geography, culture and folklore in order to fully understand local history.
At the University of Leicester we continue to drive this discipline and develop and apply the internationally recognised perspectives on local studies today. Not least in our comparative method, used to test hypotheses and interpretations of a single area by comparisons with places both within and outside the British Isles.
Where other local history departments may remain resolutely local, the Leicester Approach entails an internationally significant approach to local studies. We continue to innovate in our research methods, for example through the use of oral history and through our work on gravestones and memorials as ways of understanding attitudes to the afterlife and what these can tell us about the sense of belonging to a place.
Indeed in today's fast moving, technologically driven society, that need for a sense of belonging has never been stronger - witness the burgeoning interest in the popular media of genealogy and local history. The Leicester Approach to English local history provides a rigorous intellectual and methodological underpinning to the understanding of our place and our histories. At the University of Leicester it has always been about new ideas, not old ones.
