Keith Jenkins

Keith Jenkins is a British historiographer. Like Hayden White and other "postmodern" historiographers, Jenkins believes that any historian's output should be seen as a literary construct. A work of history is as much about the historian's own world view and ideological positions as it is about past events. This means that different historians will inevitably ascribe different meaning to the same historical events.

Jenkins is professor in history at the University of Chichester and author of Re-thinking History (1991), On "What is History" : From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (1995) and edited The Postmodern History Reader (1997), the author of Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity (1999). With Alun Munslow he co-authored The Nature of History Reader (2004), in which key pieces of writing by leading historians are reproduced and evaluated, with an explanation and critique of their character and assumptions.

References

• Dr Keith Jenkins