Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
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- Reader
- IOE - Education, Practice & Society
- UCL Institute of Education
I am a historian of modern Britain with interests in the social history
of learning and learners, social movements, co-operation and everyday life. I aim to
understand education and learning in relation to broader social,
economic, cultural and political changes and inequalities. I work across the boundaries of history and the humanities, education and social sciences. I completed a degree and MA at Sussex University. Before embarking on an academic career, I worked in adult literacy, community publishing, voluntary organisations and co-operatives. My PhD, from Manchester University, examined working class writers and writing since the 1970s.
I am a member of the International Centre for Historical Research in Education (ICHRE) and a co-editor (with Mark Freeman and Susannah Wright) of the journal History of Education and previously edited the History of Education Researcher (with Susannah Wright). I serve on the executive committee of the History of Education Society.
Languages spoken/written
Italian (intermediate); French (basic)




I have published widely on working class culture, co-operation and mutuality, co-operative education and compulsory education. These include Working Class Writing and Publishing in the Late Twentieth Century (Manchester University Press, 2018); Secondary Education and the Raising of the School Leaving Age (Palgrave, 2013, with Gary McCulloch and Steven Cowan); Community and Mutual Ownership: A Historical Review (Joseph Rowntree, 2010, with David Crook and Vincent Carpentier).
I have edited special issues of the Oxford Review of Education (36, 2, 2010) on ‘Histories of learning in the modern world’ (with Gary McCulloch); Forum (55, 2, 2013) on ‘Co-operative education for a new age?’ (with Michael Fielding) and the International Journal of Inclusive Education (23, 11, 2019) on ‘Co-operative schools: values and leadership in difficult times’.
I have edited two books, Co-operation, Learning and Co-operative Values (Routledge, 2015) and Learning for a Co-operative World: Education, Social Change and the Co-operative College (UCL Press, 2019, with Linda Shaw).
Currently, I am updating the history of the Institute of Education for UCL Press and also writing a history of the Co-operative College for Palgrave Macmillan.
My teaching spans the history of learning, both formal and informal, mainly from the late eighteenth century to the present. I have taught at a number of universities including Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan, Leeds and Sassari in Italy. I am a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
2018 | ATQ04 - Recognised by the HEA as a Senior Fellow | University College London |