Short answers, pulled from the story.
Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. It also refers to any body of historical work on a particular subject. When you study historiography you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, who lived from 484 to 425 BC, became known as the father of history. He composed The Histories, attempted to distinguish between more and less reliable accounts, and personally conducted research by travelling extensively across Mediterranean cultures.
In Europe, the academic discipline of historiography was established in the 5th century BC with the Histories by Herodotus, founding Greek historiography. In China, Sima Tan and Sima Qian established Chinese historiography with the Shiji during the Han Empire, and in Rome Cato the Elder produced the Origines in the 2nd century BC.
During the Age of Enlightenment, Voltaire, David Hume, and Edward Gibbon set the foundations for the modern discipline. Voltaire emphasized customs, social history, and the arts over diplomatic and military events, while Gibbon's heavy use of primary sources in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire made him the first modern historian.
Leopold von Ranke, who lived from 1795 to 1886, was the founder of modern source-based history and pioneered methods at German universities. He implemented the seminar teaching method, insisted on primary sources with proven authenticity, and in 1831 founded the first historical journal in the world.
The Annales school was a French approach that stressed long-term social history rather than political or diplomatic themes. Its journal was founded in 1929 in Strasbourg by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, and its second era, led by Fernand Braudel, emphasized the study of structures over the longue duree.