In this episode, recorded in July 2020, Jo Fox, Director of the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) talks to the modern historian, Professor Claire Langhamer of Sussex University. Clare and Jo discussed how historians are responding to the 2020 pandemic and Black Lives Matter campaign, and how future historians will write the history of this extraordinary year.

Claire is also a Trustee of the Mass Observation Archive at Sussex and a specialist in modern record keeping. How people choose to record their experience of 2020 is central to her current work, as is the question of how historians - now and in the future - make best use of these sources.

This is the first in a 2-part set of conversations which followed the IHR's 2020 'Historical Research' Lecture on the subject of 'Writing Histories of 2020: responses and perspectives'. The annual lecture is supported by Oxford University Press who publish the Institute's academic journal, 'Historical Research'.