Professor Kevin Myers

School of Education
Professor in History and Education

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0) 121 415 8230
Email: k.p.myers@bham.ac.uk

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

Kevin joined the University of Birmingham in 2000. He teaches social history and education on the BA (Hons) Education programme and he is a member of the editorial boards for the journals, Education Review, History of Education and Paedagogica Historica.

His current learning and teaching role is to lead the Teachers for Educational Equity project with partner schools and philanthropic organisations in Malaysia. Working together the project seeks to develop skilled and qualified teachers, who are research-engaged and research active, and to build capacity for inclusive education in underserved schools.

Kevin’s research focuses on the relationship between histories, memories and education. He is particularly interested in histories of migration, in the educational experiences of marginalised peoples and how these histories might come to support educational futures that are socially just. His latest book is entitled : Struggles for a Past: Irish and Afro-Caribbean histories in England 1951-2000

Qualifications

PhD
PGCertLTHE
BSc

Teaching

Kevin leads the learning and teaching component of the Teachers for Educational Equity project, and on a number of undergraduate modules exploring educational pasts, presents and futures.

Postgraduate supervision

Kevin welcomes enquiry from prospective students in the history and sociology of education.

Current students:

2021-. Talia Sanchez (ESRC 1+3 studentship, PhD) Gender and Pedagogy in Black Britain.
2020-. Manning Luo (PhD). Education, Social Class and Boarding Schools Students in China.

Successful submission:

2018-2022. Elizabeth Staddon (PhD). Money, Morality and Markets in Higher Education.
2015 -2021. Kate Bennett. (PhD). Education, Informal Learning and Museums.
2012 - 2020. Alison Laitner. (PhD). Disabled Children in Birmingham, 1700-1860. Care, containment and education.
2015-2020. Matthew Barnard. (PhD). Multiculturalism and Globalisation in British secondary schools.
2012-2018. Julie Foster. (PhD). Education and Social Mobility in 19th century Britain.
2012- 2018. Angeliki Voskou. (PhD). Greek Supplementary Schooling and Cultural Traditions.
2016. Paul Smith. (MPhil). Technologies of Education in the 20th century.
2004-08. Anna Brown (PhD). ‘Caring Power: Special Education and the Feebleminded in Birmingham 1870-1914

Research

Kevin’s research explores the relationship between histories, memories and education. He is interested in how the emergence and evidentiary rules of Social Science, especially disciplinary History, informed a whole range of educational practices produced for, and in the name of, national and imperial peoples. The knowledge practices that help to produce memories and attribute identities are always matters of contestation, resistance and change. An increasingly explicit part of my research is around the use of historical practices to imagine new educational futures and to contribute to socially just, and reparative, societies.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Myers, K 2015, Struggles for a Past: Irish and Afro-Caribbean histories in England, 1951-2000. Manchester University Press.

Thomas, G & Myers, K 2015, The Anatomy of the Case Study. SAGE Publications.

Article

Myers, K, Nally, D, Sriprakash, A & Paulson, J 2024, 'Reparative Futures', Futures, vol. 164, 103474. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2024.103474

Myers, K, Sriprakash, A & Sutoris, P 2021, 'Towards a 'new humanism'? Time and emotion in UNESCO's science of world-making, 1947-51', Journal of World History, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 685-715. <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/838051>

Grosvenor, I & Myers, K 2020, '‘Dirt and the child’: a textual and visual exploration of children’s physical engagement with the urban and the natural world', History of Education, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 517-535.

De Vuyst, J, Myers, K & van Gorp, A 2019, 'The paradox of the alien citizen? access, control and entitlements of Belgian refugees in Birmingham during the First World War', Journal of Refugee Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey071

Sriprakash, A, Sutoris, P & Myers, K 2019, 'The science of childhood and the pedagogy of the state: postcolonial development in India, 1950s', Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 345-359. https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12246

Myers, K, Ramsey, P & Proctor, H 2018, 'Rethinking borders and boundaries for a mobile history of education', Paedagogica Historica, vol. 54, no. 6, pp. 677-690. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2018.1521452

Grosvenor, I & Myers, K 2017, 'Questioning difference: bodies, (re-)presentation, and the development of “multicultural Britain” ', Paedagogica Historica, vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 730-750. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2017.1349157

Ydesen, C & Myers, K 2016, 'The imperial welfare state? Decolonisation, education and professional interventions on immigrant children in Birmingham, 1948–1971', Paedagogica Historica, vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 453-466. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2016.1192207

Myers, K & Grosvenor, I 2014, 'Cultural learning and historical memory: a research agenda', Encounters on Education, vol. 15, pp. 3-21. https://doi.org/10.15572/ENCO2014.01

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Myers, K 2020, Citizenship, curricula and mass schooling. in T Fitzgerald (ed.), Handbook of Historical Studies in Education: : Debates, Tensions, and Directions. Springer International Handbooks of Education, Springer.

Chapter

Sriprakash, A, Nally, D, Myers, K & Ramos-Pinto, P 2023, Learning With the Past: Racism, Education and Reparative Futures. in Y Hutchinson, A Arturo Cortez Ochoa, J Paulson & L Tikly (eds), Decolonizing Education for Sustainable Futures. Policy Press, pp. 182-198. <https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/decolonizing-education-for-sustainable-futures>

Myers, K 2018, Collaborative Research: History from Below. in K Facer & K Dunleavy (eds), Connected Communities Foundation Series.. Connected Communities Foundation Series, University of Bristol, pp. 1-49.

Book/Film/Article review

Myers, K 2018, 'Privatisation and the education of marginalised children: policies, impacts and global lessons', Educational Review, pp. 141-124.

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