A $152,000 grant to History & Policy will help UK policymakers learn the lessons of history.

Based at the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research, History & Policy is an initiative that seeks to put historians in touch with those discussing and deciding public policy.

It helps address both policymakers’ reluctance to let historians ‘in’ and the barriers that prevent historians from accessing the necessary networks.

Its long-term aim is to become the “arbiter and provider of impartial historical knowledge to policy and media audiences” and to prevent future politicians and commentators looking at a policy failure and uttering the cliché: “Why didn’t we learn the lessons of the past.”

Currently, History & Policy has a network of more than 120 historians based at universities in the UK and abroad.