University of Hertfordshire Press

UH Press grew out of the Hertfordshire Technical Information Service (HERTIS) which was a county-wide knowledge-sharing service for local industry, based at Hatfield Polytechnic. So much information was produced by this initiative that a HERTIS imprint was started to collate and publish the material. This early publishing activity was overseen by Bill Forster who became the head of UH Press when it was born. It is considered one of the leading UK university publishing houses.

UH Press publishes in the following subject areas: • Local and regional history • Theatre studies • Psychology • Education • Sustainable communities • Law • Romani studies

UH Press publishes books in the area of Romany Gypsy life, culture and history. English Gypsies and State Policies by David Mayall (UH Press, 1995) and On the Verge: The Gypsies of England by Donald Kenrick and Siam Bakewell (UH Press, 1995) were the first titles to be published in this area. UH Press was invited to join Interface, a Europe-wide consortium of publishers set up to disseminate research about the Romany peoples.

The series Studies in Regional and Local History began in 2003 with A Hertfordshire Demesne of Westminster Abbey: Profits, productivity and weather by Derek Vincent Stern and Chris Thornton (UH Press, 2003). This series reached volume 14 in 2016 with Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society: Revisiting Tawney and Postan by J.P. Bowen and A.T. Brown (eds) (UH Press, 2016). Another series, Explorations in Local and Regional History, is a continuation and development of the 'Occasional Papers' of the University of Leicester's Department of English Local History, a series started by Herbert Finberg in 1952. Hertfordshire Publications became an imprint of UH Press in 2001 and publishes local history books with a focus on Hertfordshire. The imprint is an association between UH Press and the Hertfordshire Association for Local History. In 2015 it published Archaeology in Hertfordshire: Festschrift for Tony Rook by Kris Lockyear (ed) to celebrate the life and work of Tony Rook, a leading practitioner of archaeology in the county and is "based on a conference marking Mr Rook's 80th birthday".