Higher Education Committee biographies
HA Committees
Meet the Higher Education Committee
Katharine Burn
Katharine Burn is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Oxford, where she teaches on the PGCE History programme and on a range of part-time Masters courses for practising teachers. She is co-editor of the HA’s professional journal Teaching History and a member of the Editorial Board of the History Education Research Journal (HERJ) published by UCL Press. Her research interests focus on history education and on teachers’ professional learning. She co-directs the HA’s annual survey of history teaching in secondary schools and her publications include MasterClass in History Education and The Guided Reader to Teaching and Learning History.
Katy Cubitt
Katy Cubitt is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia, where she has worked since 2017. Prior to this, she worked for over twenty years at the University of York. She is a specialist in early medieval History, particularly of the early English kingdoms, and in the transnational history of the Mediterranean. Her latest book, Sin and Society in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England will be published by CUP in 2022. She is a member of the HA Council. She has been a History subpanellist of both the 2014 and 2021 REFs, and was a Council member of the Royal Historical Society from 2014-2017.
Jennifer Davey
Jennifer Davey is Associate Professor in Modern British History at the University of East Anglia and is Editor-in-Chief of History, the journal of the Historical Association. Her research focuses on the politics and culture of Victorian Britain. Her first book - ‘Mary, Countess of Derby and the politics of Victorian Britain’ (OUP, 2019) – explored how a woman was able to carve out a career as a politician in the mid-nineteenth century. She is currently writing her second book for OUP which will explore the relationship between Queen Victoria and her subjects.
Dr Hannah Elias
Dr Hannah Elias is head of ‘inclusive histories’ projects and public engagement manager at the Institute of Historical Research. She also a Course Tutor for the IHR's M.Res in Historical Research and an Associate Research Fellow. Hannah’s research focuses on race, religion and social protest in the twentieth century. She works on projects aimed at addressing structural inequalities in academia, ‘decolonising’ higher education, and making black British and British Asian histories a more visible part of the national history curriculum. She is a co-convenor of the IHR’s Black British History and Modern Religious History seminars, was shortlisted for the 2020 AHRC/BBC3 New Generation Thinker scheme, and is participating in the AHRC’s 2020 Engaging with Government scheme.
Dr Sarah Holland
Dr Sarah Holland is a historian of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her research focuses on histories of the countryside, rural health and the relationship between town and country. Her second monograph, Farming, Psychiatry and Rural Society, is under contract with Routledge. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham where she teaches on a range of modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate modules. She is proactively interested in pedagogical matters including creative assessment and student engagement through public history and public engagement initiatives. She also has experience of working with community groups on collaborative research and heritage projects, as well as policy and media work related to her research.
She is the Education Officer for History UK, a member of the Steering Committee of the East Midlands Centre for History Learning and Teaching and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
David Ingledew
David Ingledew is Principal Lecturer in Education at the University of Hertfordshire, where he is the Lead for Secondary Initial Teacher Education and module leader for the History ITE programme. Following a career in the NHS, he trained and taught history in 11-18 state secondary schools for 14 years. He is the secretary of the History Teachers Education Network (HTEN) and is currently undertaking doctoral research on the use and rationale for educational talk/dialogue in secondary history. His other research interests include collaboration and transitions between school history and higher education, and mental health in education.
Dr Claire Kennan
Dr Claire Kennan is the Research Coordinator and Lecturer in History at Bader College, Queen's University (Canada) based at Herstmonceux Castle. Claire specialises in the history of Britain between 1300 and 1500, with a particular focus on the social and cultural impact of the Black Death, the pre-Reformation parish, popular piety and medieval guilds. She is the co-editor for the new Brepols series Reinterpreting the Middle Ages: From Medieval to Neo, a collaborator on the SSHRC-funded Environments of Change Project. Claire frequently appears in the UK media having worked recently with the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, BBC Radio 4 and History Hit.
Dr Sundeep Lidher
Sundeep read history at the universities of St Andrews, Oxford and Cambridge. Her doctoral research examined the emergence of British citizenship and immigration policies in the years between 1945 and 1962. Her postdoctoral work, on the AHRC-funded ‘Beyond Banglatown’ project, charts the history and evolution of the ‘Indian’ restaurant trade on Brick Lane. Sundeep co-led the multi-award winning Our Migration Story project, a partnership between The Runnymede Trust and universities of Manchester and Cambridge. The website, designed to support classroom teachers, charts the long history of migration to Britain from AD 43 to the present day. The site was recipient of a Community Integration ‘Research Champion’ Award (2017), the Royal Historical Society’s Public History Prize for Best Online Resource (2018), and the Guardian University Award for Research Impact (2019). In September 2020 Sundeep will join the Department of History at KCL as Lecturer in Black and Asian British History.
Dr Michael Maddison
Dr Michael Maddison is an independent educational consultant with particular expertise in the curriculum and the teaching of history. He served as National Lead for history at Ofsted (2008 - 2015) and was the author of ‘History for All’, Ofsted’s highly regarded national report on history in schools. Before this, Michael taught history and politics for over 25 years. During this period, he was also a senior examiner and moderator at both GCSE and A level.
Michael has also undertaken work to develop teaching and learning in history across the World. He is associate vice president and honorary fellow of the HA, a former Deputy President of the HA, Fellow of the RHS, and a member of the RHS Education Policy Committee. Michael is also a Director of the Heritage Education Trust and a judge for the Sandford Award for Heritage Education.
Michael has written extensively and spoken on numerous platforms about history in schools. His most recent work includes ‘Ten Things to Remember when Teaching History…’.
Helen Snelson
Helen Snelson is the leader of the PGCE History course at the University of York. She taught history in 11-18 schools for over 20 years. Her department had an HA Gold Quality Mark and she is a Chartered History Teacher. Helen is also a EuroClio ambassador.