The History Faculty has recently established a Centre for the History of Childhood. This is the first centre for the history of childhood in the United Kingdom, and it is hoped that its creation will help to foster interest in this burgeoning area of historical research within and without the University. The Centre exists both to promote research into the history of childhood and to encourage links between historians and childcare professionals in the belief that close association between the two will be of mutual benefit. Its directors in the first instance are Laurence Brockliss and George Rousseau. They are assisted on the one hand by an internal committee of Faculty postholders interested in the history of childhood and on the other by an external committee of childcare professionals from different backgrounds.

In the immediate future, the Centre’s main role will be to provide an institutional focus for the five-year seminar programme on the history of childhood, which began in Michaelmas 2003 and mount an annual cross-disciplinary colloquium on a particular theme. In the longer term, it is intended that the Centre should contribute a course on the history of childhood to the University’s master’s programmes and promote doctoral study. With this intention, the directors with the help of members of the external committee are exploring ways of seeking outside funding to give the Centre the necessary financial security.

Professors Laurence Brockliss and George Rousseau

Faculty of History, University of Oxford

• Full description of the project
• Brief Biographies of the Co-Directors
• History Child: An article from Oxford Magazine (2003)
• Reading Group
• Programme First (Word) (MT 2009)
• Colloquium 4 July 2009: Becoming a Person
  
• 25 and 26 September 2009: Citizenship, Modernisation and Nationhood: The Cultural Role of Mass Education 1870-1930 programme
• Conference booking form