Research
Research at the International Centre for Historical Research in Education.
Our members research a range of topics in the history of education, including formal education (such as schooling and the student experience), youth and social movements, voluntary organisations and philanthropy, popular and community history.
Current and recent research projects are funded by the ESRC, AHRC, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, Society for Educational Studies, and Swedish Research Council.
List of projects
- The School Meals Service (SMS): Past, Present – and Future? (ESRC, 2023-2026)
- Generation UCL: 200 Years of Student Life in London (Provost’s Award, 2022-2026)
- Archiving the mixed economy of welfare in Britain (British Academy, 2023-2028)
- Discourses of Voluntary Action at two “Transformational Moments” of the Welfare State, the 1940s and 2010
- Reading Aloud in Britain Today (RABiT) (AHRC, 2017-2019)
- Archiving the mixed economy of welfare in Britain (British Academy, 2014-2024)
- The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain 1905-2016 (AHRC, 2013-2016)
- The Moral Economy of Global Civil Society: A History of Voluntary Food Aid (Swedish Research Council, 2013-2016)
- The Social Organisation of Educational Studies: Past, Present and Future
- Social Change and English, 1945-1965
See also:
- UCL Research Portal, IRIS to find more about our researchers, publications, activities, groups and themes.
Engagement
TV and radio
ICHRE staff provided advice and support for BBC programmes on the history of education:
- Free Thinking, What we cherish and what we give away, BBC Radio 3
- Back in time for school, BBC 2 series
- The secret history of a school, BBC Radio 4 series
Exhibitions
As part of the Redress of the Past project, ICHRE staged exhibitions with partners at Bury St Edmunds, Scarborough and Carlisle
Public lectures
Professor Gary McCulloch delivered a series of lectures in China about the recent reforms in UK education, teacher education policies, and past and present perspectives on the school curriculum.
Knowledge exchange
The British Academy research project Archiving Digitising the Mixed Economy of Welfare in Britain is a collaborative, interdisciplinary project that promotes the preservation of voluntary sector archives through research and knowledge exchange.
Histories of IOE and UCL
Members of ICHRE lead historical research into our own institutions. In 2018, Georgina Brewis revised and updated UCL’s official history for UCL Press, available open access here: The World of UCL. In the run up to UCL’s bicentenary in 2026, Georgina Brewis is leading Generation UCL: Two hundred years of student life in London.
In summer 2021, Tom Woodin published an update to IOE’s official history.