Annual Report 2019

Summary

Letter from the CEO

Not only did we celebrate our 10th birthday in 2019, but the last year was also the best year in the history of Ancient History Encyclopedia in every aspect. More people than ever used our publication to learn about history, which makes us very, very happy!


We attended fewer events and conferences than in 2018, but we focused more inwards to achieve great results. Our editorial team focused on reviewing and improving older articles while still keeping the production of new articles at a high level. We also managed to cover many important subjects about the Middle Ages.


The year 2019 was under the banner of education: We focused on better serving the needs of schools, libraries and universities. We published our first teaching resources, launched a media library, created content collections and added primary sources.


We divided the site into three sections (Encyclopedia, Education, Travel) and our team almost doubled in size to make all of this work. We also greatly grew our library of audio articles and we launched the possibility to translate our articles to other languages... and much more, too much to list here!


Financially, this was the best year we ever had, which was welcome after making a loss in 2018. We are now set up to expand our operations in 2020 with more salaried employees to further our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide.


It was an excellent year. A big thank you to all our volunteers, supporters, donors and members who make this whole project possible.


Keep reading below for more details...


Jan van der Crabben, CEO

Statistics

25.2 Million Readers

We had over 25 million readers from all over the world who read over 52 million pages on our website. This is by far our record in our 10-year history and we're extremely proud to have helped so many people learn about history. If each of them learned only a little bit more about our past, we've made a good step towards making the world a better place!

Education

We are aware of 3,986 schools, universities and libraries who used our website in 2019. That's 18% more than last year, which is a nice increase. We also produced 26 collections of articles and media grouped around key curriculum subject and published 5 teaching resources aimed at middle and high school teachers and homeschoolers.

930,000 Followers

Our social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr grew to an impressive 930,000 followers. That's over 200,000 more than last year, the biggest growth we have seen in any year. An honourable mention goes out to our Youtube Channel, which saw the greatest percentual growth.

2,480 Articles

Our authors and editors published 379 new articles and definitions on the website, bringing the total to 2480.

On top of that, our editors reworked a large number of our older articles, updating them with new information and making sure they comply with our newly raised editorial standards.

Highlights

UNESCO Archives Partnership

After co-sponsoring the UNESCO Heritage Lab in late 2018, we struck an official partnership with the UNESCO Archives. Both organizations have the mission to foster intercultural dialogue through education and cultural heritage, creating strong alignment. We launched our partnership with a cross-promotion of UNESCO's work to save the temples at Abu Simbel, Egypt from flooding caused by the construction of the Aswan dam.


You can see our Nubia collection containing exclusive images from the UNESCO archives. 

USI Chair UNESCO Summer School 2019

Ancient History Encyclopedia presented our vision for digital cultural heritage at the Summer School of the UNESCO chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites, which as held at the Benedictine Convent of St John at Müstair, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Through our partnership with the UNESCO Chair in Information and Communication Technologies at the Università della Svizzera italiana we promote sustainable and responsible heritage tourism through the use of digital technologies. 

Ancient History Encyclopedia Foundation

We launched our North American presence in Canada! Ancient History Encyclopedia Foundation (aka. Fondation de l’Encyclopédie de l’Histoire Antique) is a non-profit organization registered in Montréal, Québec.


While Ancient History Encyclopedia's roots are in the United Kingdom, we have extended our presence to North America. The legal status of non-profit organizations is much more beneficial in Canada and we aim to turn our Canadian arm into a fully-fledged charity to be able to make any donations given to the organization tax-deductible.


This move will also allow us to apply for grants and funding that was not available to us as a UK company. While the Canadian foundation is still small, we intend to grow its role in our structure in 2020.

Grant: Medieval Japan

We received a grant from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation to write articles about Medieval Japan and produce educational resources to help teachers cover the subject.


We're talking about samurais, castles and feudalism... probably one of the most exciting eras in Japanese history!


The educational resources are still in production, but you can already read our articles on Medieval Japan. 

Team

Our team almost doubled, going up from 11 to 20! That's a huge step and we've already been able to see the results of this enormous growth. We're very happy to have so many new volunteers on board who share our passion for history:

If you wish to join us, too, feel free to contact us. 

Help Us Grow

You can support our non-profit organization by becoming a member, giving a donation or by volunteering with us.