I often recommend to those who already have a general grasp on their area (whether they are an student or merely a hobbyist as you’ve admitted) to dig deeper by discovering and perusing the literature on their selected subfield or topic. This will allow you to engage with even more books and articles you may not have read before, but also to gain a deeper understanding of the ways historians have argued about this period (or person, or event, or field in general). This, for many academics, is often considered the “next step” of their historical learning. Now that you’ve gained an adequate understanding of the names, people, places, and events, it’s usually time to get the names of those really important historians who’ve written about this topic and compare what they’ve said over the years. Specifically this “next step” I am referring to is called, “historiography,” which translates to “the history of history writing.” The easiest way to find these others’ books or articles usually entails “mining” the footnotes or endnotes of a quality history book or article on the topic you’ve chosen to dig deeper into. Within those notes, you can ascertain the authors that historian has drawn from for their own knowledge about the subject. This is usually known as the historian’s “research trail”; it should lead back to primary sources (contemporaneous evidence left by historical actors themselves and the evidence historians use to reconstruct their inherently imperfect portraits of the past) at some point. In sum, doing this work will allow you to delve into the big questions others have asked (and answered) about a topic, and you can thus engage intelligently with the matter after reading their works (often many works you’ve never seen or heard of before).

I’m afraid I cannot comment on your specific subfield, and perhaps another historian will see this thread and can suggest other tips about how to get more involved. As far as academically engaging with more material, I would suggest getting into more articles and books in the ways I’ve outlined. Yet, history learning does not always have to be so dry and limited; of course, you can immerse yourself in anyway you believe might spark a greater interest in the period. Reenactors and “living” historians get involved by becoming public historians and interpreting the past for people real-time. They dress up in period clothes, speak their jargon, and behave similarly to past actors. Others may choose to watch movies, listen to podcasts, or play video games. I would be wary of the entertainment side of history though. Although history should be accessible, “good” history is hard to find sometimes. Ensure that the history you are learning is hewing closely to the ways historical practitioners construct history and not taking too many liberties with the way it’s presented. Often the entertainment industry will perpetuate erroneous and harmful apocryphal tales to a society’s detriment. History learning is fun, but must be done right.

Anyway, that’s the advice I can offer at the moment. Happy learning!