Introduction

This issue of Public History Review discusses aspects of the distinctive role of public historians that goes beyond an approach simply aimed at bringing in people to exhibitions or making historical knowledge ‘accessible’. As James Gardner argued in the last issue of Public History Review, ‘We are often our own worst enemy, failing to share what we do. If we want the public to value what we do, we need to share the process of history’. Opening up the premises underpinning different forms of historical representation can assist in widening the historical process and facilitate a way of understanding and making meaning.