ProfessorHelen Proctor

My research uses historical perspectives and methods to examine the making of contemporary educational systems, contributing both to the research field of history of education and to the field of critical inquiry into current schooling policy and practice. My principal focus is on the historical formation and reformation of the relationships between schools, families and 'communities' from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries; across different kinds and levels of schooling and through successive educational settlements from meritocracy to the rule of markets. Related to this are current investigations of histories of schooling, migration and race; histories of schooling and health and histories of family-school relations.