The Social History Society’s Public History Prize recognises activities that enhance public understanding of social and cultural history. It was established in 2020 to thank our outgoing chair, Professor Pamela Cox, for her tireless efforts to open dialogue between the society and different audiences.
The prize is awarded to a postgraduate student or early career researcher who can demonstrate excellence in taking their research beyond the academy.
The winner of the 2024 prize is Kremena Dimitrova for the project ‘What is Home: Arriving and Departing’ .
Kremena Dimitrova is a practice-based PhD student at the University of Portsmouth, whose work explores the way histories of migration can be visualised.
‘What is Home: Arriving and Departing’ was a collaboration between Kremena and the project Made with Many. Kremena used oral history to gather stories and experiences of immigration in Wellingborough. She then translated the stories into poetry and a series of murals and comics as part of the Wellingborough Stories Festival. Some of the results are visible on the Made with Many website.
The judges described the project as ‘an engaging example of collaborative, creative and co-curated public history’. They noted that it was clearly rooted within a particular historical space and said it had ‘enhanced people’s understanding of the communities that make up contemporary Wellingborough’.
Kremena told us:
I am excited and honoured to be the recipient of the 2024 Pamela Cox Public History Prize from the Social History Society in recognition of my co-created heritage-making and arts-based body of socially engaged work, What is Home: Arriving and Departing, Wellingborough Stories. I could not have achieved this without my collaborators, Made With Many, and without the support of the Wellingborough communities, to whom I am grateful. Our successful partnership demonstrates the importance of a symbiotic relationship between the arts and humanities as part of National Lottery Heritage funded placemaking projects in the public realm. As Hayden White once upon a time declared, “History today has an opportunity” – indeed, an obligation – “to avail itself of the new perspectives on the world which a dynamic science and an equally dynamic art offer.”