Introduction: Why bother with method? / The essentials. Working with/in the archives / Approaching visual materials / Material culture / Landscape and place / Researching individuals and groups. Collective biography / Life stories and historical analysis / Quantitative and qualitative analysis. GIS, spatial technologies and digital mapping / Document to database and spreadsheet / Deciphering meanings. Reading language as a historical source / Analysing behaviour as performance / Rethinking categories. Ethics and historical research / Time, temporality and history