The appeal of history

Good news for research; David Cannadine has raised £4.75m, writes Martha Goyder

Academic historians finally have something to smile about: the Institute of Historical Research has announced that it has raised £4.75m. After a year that saw one of Oxford's brightest stars, Professor Niall Ferguson, decide to cross the Atlantic for brighter skies and a bigger paycheck, the news will come as a welcome respite from higher education doom and gloom.

"I'm very pleased, but I don't want to sound complacent," says Professor David Cannadine, the institute's director. "I'm happy about what we've done, but I'm more concerned about where we have to get to."

The figure puts the institute on track to meet the ambitious £20m target set at the appeal's launch in 1999. Professor Cannadine hoped to give the British historical profession a leg-up in the struggle to compete with the sort of American resources he experienced at Columbia University in New York. He envisaged that the money would release academics from the bureaucracy that he thinks hampers their real work of teaching and writing.

Although it is likely that some of the money will go towards a number of new professorships, it will not answer all those problems overnight. The appeal's director, Helen Cornish, says a large chunk of cash – £950,000 – is funding a much-needed refurbishment of the library, which takes in 2,000 new volumes every year. A further £500,000 will go on improving electronic resources.

The generosity of donors bodes well for the future. "It proves that history is seen as important as an academic enterprise and to the broader public culture," says Professor Cannadine, who has been advised by Claus Moser, the director of the British Museum Development Trust, and Lord Rothschild. They told him that he needed to raise "seedcorn" money – an initial burst of fundraising to provide a development office.

Might the lessons from this fundraising effort be applied across the humanities? Professor Cannadine is unsure. "I won't pretend it wasn't time-consuming and enormous effort, and how far hard-pressed university departments have time or resources to do all this, I don't know." The institute, which has the largest collection of open-access historical resources anywhere in the UK, is a "uniquely marketable product", he says, perhaps better able to attract the attention of donors than other, lower-profile institutions.

The institute expects to raise the remaining £15m of Professor Cannadine's target within the next four to five years; money that will go towards completing the centre's refurbishment and establishing further professorial chairs and three-year fellowships.

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