Wonder Woman of the Week: Alice Loxton
- Sep 28, 2022
- 2 min read
We're on a roll spotlighting historians for Wonder Women of the Week. This week's spotlight is a rising star in broadcast history as one of several historians behind the growing historical streaming platform History Hit TV. Perhaps what makes Alice Loxton such a compelling historian is her knack for storytelling. While several historians perfect the art of perfecting their research, Loxton (and honestly I) focuses on making not only accurate history, but entertaining history. One of the problems plaguing academia is that researchers are publishing work that's hard for those outside of the field to understand or even care about, and- in an age of entertaining mass misinformation- it's more important than ever that truth be more entertaining than fiction.
Several historians and anthropologists like Alice Loxton are helping bring the study of history out of libraries and university lecture halls and placing it in front of ordinary people by making it more accessible and more entertaining. Loxton's mastery of comedy storytelling has made her a perfect fit for broadcast history. With a quick wit and a penchant for new media like tiktok and YouTube, Loxton is delivering entertaining history to the masses and helping to inspire new generations to take an interest in local and global history. That talent likely came from putting in the work too. Loxton spent a large chunk of her time studying at Edinburgh developing her comedy writing skills as a writer for the historical satire magazine The Plague, which- by the way- she founded.
Today, Alice Loxton focuses her time with the growing History Hit TV- a streaming platform (with a YouTube channel) that focuses on creating entertaining and accurate historical documentaries primarily on local history around the United Kingdom. Loxton is now one of the in-house writers for the channel and one of the more frequent hosts for its documentaries- and her wit and knack for quick comedy has helped elevate History Hit to become one of the most respected historical channels on YouTube for both its historically accurate content and entertainment value.
As a history student myself, I can confidently say women are severely under-represented in the field; and female audiences are dwarfed by men watching YouTube historical videos. That's why its so important to have women present history on services like YouTube to reach beyond the screen and help inspire more young women and girls to take up the study and tell the stories of women throughout history and across the globe often drowned out by the tales of male historical figures.
Comments