ABSTRACT
Since the 1960s, various currents in historiography — social history, history from below, people's history, or bottom-up history — have moved from the study of elites to a focus on ordinary people (Thompson 1966; Zinn 1980). This focus on ordinary people has had two main consequences for public history practices. First, the lives of ordinary people have become sources for (public) historians. Family and everyday life are now among the different historical sources of (public) history projects. However, more associated with popular and amateur history, the everyday life of ordinary people has long been dissociated from academic scholarship. One challenge for public historians is to contribute to reconciling the community of historians with ordinary people and everyday life.
