Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon The Future of Microhistory 1 Forward In 2003 I wrote a proposal for a second Fulbright grant (I got the first one 2002), which I never followed up on. The proposal has been sitting in my drawer ever since. It was ment to deal with microhistory in higher education. I called it: “In the Classroom and on the Internet: Microhistory as a Teaching Tool for Graduate Education”, and in it was a detailed discussion on how best to use microhistory for internet education. Now, five years later, the Microhistory Network has been developed undir the leadership of István Szijártó, assistant professor of history at the Eötvös University in Budapest. Scholars from Hungary, Norway and Iceland are involved. One of the goals of the collaboration is to form a MA-course in microhistory. I am lucky enough to be a part of this program. The first meeting was held in Reykjavik, where I gave a short overview of my ideas on the topic seen from the Icelandic perspective – on the Icelandic school of microhistory. I have updated this paper now for publishing purposes, baised on my earlier work for the Fulbright Commission, and worked with the intellectual potential that I think microhistory for higher education contains. I hope some of this material will help future discussions about microhistory. Background The aims behind the project “In the Classroom and on the Internet: Microhistory as a Teaching Tool for Graduate Education” are three: First, I think it is important to design and develop a first-class graduate course built around the methods of microhistory as they have been shaped and applied in recent years. This course would seek to present and explain all the basic facets of microhistory as they have developed in countries such as Italy, Germany and the United States and provide an account of the differing approaches used by scholars in these countries. The main idea however would be to identify the common thread running through microhistory among all its practitioners wherever they are and to pinpoint the potentials revealed in the work of those who apply the strong characteristics of microhistory to throw light on historical development and so differentiate them from the forms of work treating history in a larger context. Secondly, I want to attempt to create a special version of this course on the internet which would demand quite different ways of implementing and thinking about the phenomenon. It will be necessary to approach this task on the assumption that the teacher and students never get to meet each other, but that the digital connections are fast and easy to use. The intention is to build up the course in such a way that it may prove useful to people with differing historical backgrounds and so that it is possible to apply the methods to diverse periods of history and to places relevant to the students themselves. Thus it should not matter where in the world any individual student finds him- or herself; students should be able to go to materials preserved in 1 © Journal of Microhistory 2008: 02.09.2008.