What is – The Peter Gosden Fellow?

Within our Executive Committee, the History of Education Society is supported by 3 individuals who have unique roles through the form of a paid Fellowship. These are the ‘Peter Gosden Fellow’, ‘Richard Aldrich Fellow’ and ‘Ruth Watts Fellow’. But what do these roles actually entail? 

Jennifer Crowdy, our current Peter Gosden Fellow, explains…

The Peter Gosden Fellow has been a great role to support the History of Education Society. Essentially, this position involves spreading awareness of the Society and the opportunities it has within the field of history of education. I am responsible for managing the social media accounts and the official website. For the social media pages, I currently manage content on X and BlueSky, posting occasional updates on HES events, blog posts (like this one!), conference information, news, and much more. I also try to vary the content by promoting quotes from history of education figures, networking with other relevant institutions, and celebrating key events in educational history. The website has been a steep learning curve, but very rewarding. As well as updating the latest information on the relevant pages and posting new content provided by the Executive Committee, I also collaborated with Elena Rossi and Susan Birch (our current Postgraduate Representatives) to create our PGR Hub. This has a wealth of resources to support postgraduate students such as myself, and is updated every month or so. It’s been a very rewarding experience understanding how to promote academia in the world of algorithms, hashtags, and attracting new viewers to the website or followers on social media.

The Peter Gosden Fellowship was named after Peter H.J.H. Gosden, our former President of the Society from 1993-1997. He had an extensive career in the field of history of education, spanning several decades and adopting many roles including lecturer, senior lecturer, and Reader at the University of Leeds, Pro-vice Chancellor at the Association of University Teachers, and University Archivist at the University of Leeds in later life. He published several renowned works of literature, including ‘The Development of Educational Administration in England and Wales’, as well as being a founder of the Journal of Educational Administration and History alongside Bill Stephens. You can read an obituary by Paul Sharp of his legacy here.