On 2 July 2025, the Royal Historical Society hosted its annual Prothero Lecture, given this year by Professor Peter Gatrell FBA on the subject of ‘Refugee World(s): a Twentieth-Century Retrospective’. Peter’s lecture drew on his recent research in the archives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva. The archive contains the letters and petitions that refugees sent to the UNHCR in the post-1945 era, and provides the historian with rare insights of how refugees presented their situation and the responses they received. The numerous case files preserved by the UNHCR disclose the hopes, aspirations and rights claims of displaced people from many different parts of the world, whether or not they were recognised under international refugee law. As Peter argued in this lecture, to consider refugees’ encounters with refugee-creating, refugee-hosting, and refugee-deterring states – and with the organisations charged with their protection and assistance – offers new approaches to refugee history and the writing of refugees into modern global history. Peter Gatrell FBA is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Manchester. His recent publications include: 'The Unsettling of Europe: the Great Migration, 1945 to the Present' (2019) and the co-authored 'Refugee Voices in Modern Global History: Reckoning with Refugeedom' (2025), which draws on the rich resources of the UNHCR archives to present the personal experiences of mass displacement. Established in 1969, Royal Historical Society’s Prothero Lecture – which is named for the historian and former RHS President, George W. Prothero (1848-1924) – has been given annually since that date. Those invited to give the lecture are leading historians whose research has shaped how we think about the past.

Your essential briefing on the rise of science diplomacy around the world, how science is reshaping global power, and what you need to know about it today.

Beyond official narratives and statistics are the complex realities and unexpected agency of displaced populations.

Deal: A one-year Arete News | Plus+ annual subscription with unrestricted digital access, normally $100, now for only $30.

The order would allow exploratory mining of the ocean floor that is overseen by an organization the U.S. hasn't joined.

An A.U.-E.U. workshop focused on how to use AI to enable the 'economic integration' and success of more techology startups.

Europe's 'AI continent' would offer up to five large-scale but power-hungry facilities drawing Big Tech with simpler rules.

From Africa to the Americas, leaders spoke of the need to ensure that policy decisions are more scientifically informed.

The Arctic Council finds itself at a difficult crossroads as its member nations move to exploit the region's mineral wealth.

Greenland's E.U. and NATO ties make it particularly unlikely the U.S. would risk a move that could destabilize the region.

UNHCR's directors scrambled to tighten its budget in response to the Trump administration's 90-day aid stoppage.

WHO's emergency moves follow months of warnings the U.N. health agency will dramatically suffer if U.S. funding is pulled.

Trump's speech to the Davos forum contrasted sharply with other leaders' creation of a Global Energy Transition Forum.

His remarks were aimed at focusing attention on rising global temperatures and unregulated artificial intelligence.

President Cyril Ramaphosa calls this 'a moment when we should harness' resources and technologies for a greater good.

The process of forcing the United States to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty and WHO will take a year to complete.

Billionaires' wealth 'surged' by US$2 trillion in a year, while 44% of the world population lives on less than US$6.85 a day.

Here's a timeline of Trump's actions involving international organizations and treaties, from his first term to the present.