Dr Susannah Wright

As postgraduate research tutor I oversee the progression of numerous students studying for our research degrees. I am Director of Studies for three current research students. I also teach on the MA Education programme, as module leader for ECS7001 Childhood in Contexts, and supervising supervise dissertations at MA level. 

Postgraduate

• EDUC7083 Childhood and Youth (Module Leader)

I provide training for research students (on the EdD, across AHSS, University-wide), and for supervisors.

Research degree supervision is a central component of my activity with students, and I am currently Director of Studies or Second Supervisor for multiple research students in Education. I would welcome enquiries related to my research interests: history and sociology of childhood and youth, histories of education (19th and 20th centuries), morality and citizenship and young people (historically and in the present), war, peace, remembrance and young people (historically and in the present)

My academic background is as a historian, and much of my research falls within the history of education and childhood. I have focused predominantly on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining moral education and citizenship, local studies of education and welfare, and young people, war, and peace. My publications cover both my funded research and historical projects. My first monograph - Morality and Citizenship in English Schools. Secular Approaches, 1897-1944 was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017 and in 2020 was awarded the History of Education Society's Kevin Brehony Prize for the best sole-authored first monograph published in the English language between 2017 and 2019. My second monograph, Youth and Peace in England, 1919-1969 (Palgrave MacMillan), was published in 2025. Current research projects focus on young people and internationalism in the 20th century, internationalist summer schools in the interwar years, and war remembrance and young people in the present.

• Interview about Remembrance in Schools project with Greatest Hits Radio (Oxford), November 2024
• British schools and education: everything you wanted to know, BBC Extra Podcast, July 2022;
• Remembrance opinion piece was published in the Times Educational Supplement March 2020,
• ‘The 1870 Education Act’, BBC History Magazine, February 2020;
• (with E. Cawthorne) ‘Class warfare’, BBC History Magazine, March 2019.
• Main speaker at Bradfield College’s Remembrance Sunday service in November 2019; Workshop, co-developed and co-delivered with two project schools, at AHRC WW1 Engagement Centres Legacy of the First World War Festival, Cardiff, July 2019; Pamphlet: Planning Remembrance Day Events in Your School, 2018

• History of Education Society UK (Hon. Secretary);
• Histories of Education Network, European Educational Research Association (Co-Convenor)
• Social History Society
• International Standing Conference for the History of Childhood and Youth
• Royal Historical Society (Fellowship)

Selected conference and seminar papers

• ‘Will the real CND please stand up? Young people and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in late 1950s/1960s England’. Centre for the History of Childhood, Oxford, seminar series, 2 June 2025.
• ‘A secularising mission? Moral instruction in English schools, 1890s to 1918’, The Political Project of Secularization and Modernization through Education Reform seminar, 17 March 2022, Centre for Education Policy Research, Aalborg University, Campus Copenhagen and online.
• ‘School magazines and international in England in the interwar years’, Histories of Education Doctoral Summer School (online), organised by University of Lyon, 3-5 June 2021.
• Morality and citizenship in English schools 1897-1944: secularists and educational reform’, Education Reform Network seminar series (online), 4 November 2020 {invited speaker). ‘War, peace, and schooling. Armistice commemoration in Britain in the late 1930s’. Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion research seminar series, University of Lancaster, 28 November 2018 (invited speaker).
• ‘"Our Future [British] Citizens"? Secular approaches to teaching values in the early twentieth century’. BERA History SIG Annual Colloquium (Teaching British Values), London, 7 July 2017 (invited keynote speaker). An event aimed at bringing historical and present-day approaches together.
• 'Remembrance in Schools' (with Annie Haight and David Aldridge). 'Their Past, Their Memories symposium, AHRC Teaching and Learning War Research Network, King's College London, 15 September 2017 (invited round-table participant).
• ‘"Our Future [British] Citizens"? Secular Approaches to Teaching Values in the Early Twentieth Century’, BERA History SIG Annual Colloquium (Teaching British Values), 7 July 2017 (invited keynote speaker). 
• ‘Secularism and Character Formation in English Schools 1897-c.1923’, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues seminar series, University of Birmingham, 8 March 2017 (invited speaker).
• '"A world where their descendents enjoy all that they set out to secure". The League of Nations Union and Armistice Commemoration, 1919-1939'. History of Education Society/ANZHES Annual Conference, Great Malvern, November 2016.
• 'The Ethical Movement and Moral Instruction. Moments of International Activity 1892-1914'. European Conference of Educational Research, Dublin, August 2016.
• (with David Aldridge, Patrick Alexander and Annie Haight) 'Remembrance in Schools'. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Lunchtime Lecture, 28 April 2016.
• 'League of Nations Union Junior Branches 1919-1939'. European Conference of Educational Research, Budapest, September 2015.
• 'Creating world citizens in British Schools, 1919-1939'. History of Education Society Annual Conference, Dublin, November 2014.
• (with Peter Forsaith) 'Dora Cohen: an educational life'. History of Education Society Annual Conference, Exeter, November 2013.
• 'Saving the Birmingham Slum-Child, 1890-1910'. International Standing Conference for the History of Education, Riga, August 2013.
• 'The ethical rebel? Frederick James Gould and world citizenship 1919-39'. History of Education Society Annual Conference, Winchester, November 2012.
• 'Religion and philanthropy in Birmingham 1890-1910'. Invited seminar: Religion, Health and Welfare since 1750, Glasgow Caledonian University, October 2012.
• 'Creating world citizens? League of Nations teaching in English schools, 1919-39'. Invited speaker: Institute of Historical Research History of Education Seminar, London, 3 November 2011.
• 'Creating religious or secular citizens? Moral instruction in English elementary schools at the turn of the twentieth century'. History of Education Society Annual Conference, London, November 2010.
• 'Moral education and the English elementary school'. Citizenship, Modernisation and Nationhood: The Cultural Role of Mass Education 1870-1930, Magdalen College, Oxford, 25-26 September 2009.
• 'Religion, secularism and morality in English elementary schools'. International Standing Conference for the History of Education, Utrecht, August 2009.
• 'Inside the Black Box? School Log Books'. Invited symposium: The black box of schooling: a cultural history of the classroom, Rotterdam, June 2008.

Other experience

• 1993-1996 University of Leeds, BA Joint Honours History and Sociology
• 1997-1999 Oxford Brookes University, MA Historical Studies
• 2000-2006 Oxford Brookes University, PhD (History Department)
• 2003-2007 Oxford University Department of Education, Research Officer 
• 2007-2009 Oxford Brookes University, Research Fellow in Education
• 2009-Present Oxford Brookes University, Senior Lecturer in Education 
• 2018-Present Oxford Brookes University, Postgraduate Research Tutor