Local population studies using parish registers: ideas for future research

Abstract

This short note discusses possible ideas for future research using parish register data and ways in which local and amateur historians might contribute to a new research agenda. In this, it is an attempt to resurrect and strengthen the links between amateur and professional historians that were integral to the work of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure in the 1960s and 1970s, and which led to the foundation of the journal Local Population Studies. The ideas discussed here are not fully formed, and should be seen as a contribution to a research agenda which is likely to be fluid, open-ended and responsive to initiatives from local and family historians.