The 2023 History of Education Society (UK) book prize winners were announced on November 18, 2023, at the Annual General Meeting. We are delighted to announce the Anne Bloomfield Prize, for the best book written in English on the history of education, has been awarded to Rosalind Crone, Illiterate Inmates: Educating Criminals in Nineteenth Century England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. The Kevin Brehony Prize, for the best first single-authored book written in English on the history of education, has been awarded to Jonathan Doney, Unearthing Policies of Instrumentalization in English Religious Education Using Statement Archaeology, London: Routledge, 2020. Both books testify to the range and depth of scholarly activity in the history of education.
Anne Bloomfield Book Prize
Rosalind Crone, Illiterate Inmates: Educating Criminals in Nineteenth Century England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
Rosalind Crone’s book on prison education has uncovered an important yet underexplored area of the history of education. Teaching the 3Rs – reading, writing and later arithmetic – to prisoners in England was a significant enterprise from the early nineteenth century. Even during periods of harsh prison regimes, when there was a heightened expectation that inmates should be punished, education was a continuing presence although, ultimately, the emphasis on deterrence undermined some of the more ambitious attempts at reconstructing prisoners. Crone evaluates the tension between state initiatives across England and the diversity of places and institutions in which prison education actually took place, both in local and convict prisons. Through meticulous scholarly research, she examines the intricate and labyrinthine detail of curriculum and pedagogy in penal settings, where elementary education took on new meanings within the specific prison environment. A significant range of quantitative evidence, archival and documentary research is deployed to provide new insights into this phenomenon. The book enhances our understanding of the history of literacy, education and prisons and so contributes to broader perspectives on the social and cultural history of England.
Kevin Brehony Book Prize
Jonathan Doney, Unearthing Policies of Instrumentalization in English Religious Education Using Statement Archaeology, London: Routledge, 2020.
Jonathan Doney’s book explores the underlying theory and method of statement archaeology to analyse policy development, specifically in relation to religious education. It is an innovative book which applies the theory and practice of statement archaeology to the history of education. It does so in a way that makes methodological insights available for further refinement and application to other areas of study. Doney´s book also provides a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of compulsory religious education in English state-maintained schools. From this standpoint, it engages with key current debates in religious education policy and so brings the past and present into a close and productive relationship which enriches our understanding of the past as well as contemporary policy. It will be useful to future scholars and students in history of education as well as those working on educational studies, religious education, research methods and policy and politics more widely.