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’.
However, what do these roles actually entail? We are currently working on creating a dedicated Fellowship page for the Society. In its lead-up to publication, HES are featuring a ‘What Is ?’ blog series, where we will be exploring these Fellowships to raise awareness of how they contribute towards the Society.
Catherine Freeman, our current Richard Aldrich Fellow, explains what her role involves…
The Richard Aldrich Fellow supports the work of Exe Libris, the online bibliographic database [http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/hoebibliography/index.php], which is a much-frequented aspect of the History of Education Society UK’s website. Exe Libris was launched at the 2019 History of Education Society Conference and has two aims: to assist in longitudinal analysis of journal publications regarding the history of education in English, and to highlight key trends in the field. The work has two parts. Firstly, the Fellow analyses the content of 54 journal articles to find articles relating to education history. Relevant articles are entered onto a spreadsheet and given codes to indicate their chronology and themes. Secondly, the Fellow writes a review of the literature, which is published in the History of Education Researcher’s May issue. This comprises in part of tables outlining chronological groupings, geographical areas written about and selected subject groupings to enable easy comparisons with the previous few years. The data presented in each table is then discussed in further detail.
The prime purpose of the Richard Aldrich Fellowship is to enable the continued updating of the bibliographic database, which is evidently of use to people around the world. Through this work the Society can be of immediate use to scholars or interested people, fulfilling several of the Missions and Aims listed on the website. By producing a written record of published activity in our field, we go beyond helping contemporary researchers to providing a map of themes in education history to assist future researchers and interested parties.
The Richard Aldrich Fellowship was named after Professor Richard Aldrich (1937-2014), Emeritus Professor of the History of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. He was prominent in the Society’s History, having roles including secretary, President, and much more. To find out more about his legacy, you can read our obituary for Richard here.