Essex historian awarded Lifetime Achievement Award

A lifetime achievement award has been presented to Professor Lucy Noakes from the School of Philosophical, Historical, and Interdisciplinary Studies.

Professor Noakes was formally presented with the award by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Archives and History at a special ceremony at the House of Commons.

She said: "I was delighted and honoured to receive this lifetime achievement award for history from Chris Evans MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Archives and History.

"Following in the footsteps of previous award holders, who include figures like Eric Hobsbawm, Asa Briggs and Margaret Macmillan, it's a reminder of the wide recognition of the strength and importance of the history programme here at Essex."

The All Party Parliamentary Group for Archives and History is a cross-party, non-partisan body that aims to support archives and promote the study of history. Gary Tuson, Chief Archivist at Norfolk County Council, also received a lifetime achievement award at the event. Professor Noakes is the Rab Butler Chair in Modern History at the University of Essex, and President of the Royal Historical Society, where she campaigns and advocates for the value of history and promotes and supports the work of historians.

Professor Noakes added: "I believe that history is, above all, about the stories that we tell. We all construct narratives about our own lives and it is the relationship between these individual stories and the great sweep of 20th century history that makes the study of the past so fascinating and so vital.

"The ways that we approach and understand past lives, and the ways that their stories are remembered, are central to contemporary politics. The work of historians today probably has a greater relevance and urgency than at any other time in the recent past."

Find out more about Professor Noakes' latest research

In September, Professor Noakes published 'Making a Usable Past? Time, Memory and Britain's Second World War' in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (2026). This article considers the emerging memory of the Second World War in 1945 Britain and asks whether this can help us to understand its popularity and power during the 'Brexit' debates of the 2010s.

She also recently published The People's Victory: VE Day Through the Eyes of Those Who Were There where she mines the mass observation archive to present a groundbreaking history of how Britons at home celebrated and experienced the end of World War II.