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Getting on with history

A significant part of the HE agenda in Britain, Europe and the USA at the present time is employability. In history programmes this usually takes the form of placements, modules in essay writing, literacy, team working and so on. But there is more than this. There is also the connection between these activities and the skills and qualities of mind expected from the history graduate. The Quality Assurance Agency History Benchmarking Statements and National Qualifications Framework are forging this link in the UK. The purpose of this paper is to dilate on this and deconstruct the assumptive argument that underpins what is a centrally imposed regime of knowledge acquisition. This paper explores the notion of regimes of knowledge, measurability and the generation of truth cast within (among other things) the supposed practical world discourse of skills and employability. I will argue that this agenda for making historians employable has the consequence(perhaps unintended?) of reinforcing a conception of historical thinking and practice that reduces and de-legitimises fundamental debate over the nature of what history is. Put in stark terms, can epistemologically sceptical historians who, by definition, do not conform and who are not merely intellectually disobedient but disruptive get jobs (especially in HE) and be seen as ‘getting on with history’?