Senior Lecturer in the History of Education, UCL Institute of Education.

Georgina Brewis teaches history across UCL and researches the interlinked histories of voluntary action, education, youth and students in Britain and the wider world in the 20th century.

Her first book A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and Beyond 1880-1980 (Palgrave, 2014) takes a long view of the student experience and examines students’ participation in volunteering, social service and social action. She continues to work on the history of students, including on the history of UCL and on the impact of students on universities after the First World War (via an AHRC project British Ex-Service Students and the Rebuilding of Europe, 1919-1926).

She is currently completing a co-authored book on two centuries of humanitarianism, arising from a Swedish Research Council funded project, and now is Co-Investigator on an ESRC-funded project Discourses of Voluntary Action which is investigating changing understandings of the role of voluntary organisations in welfare provision.

Georgina has a long-standing interest in issues of archiving and record keeping for voluntary organisations and charities and is Director of the British Academy Research Project ‘Digitising the Mixed Economy of Welfare in Britain’, a knowledge exchange project supporting this sector.

Key Publications

• The World of UCL (UCL Press: Open Access) (2018)
• A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and Beyond, 1880-1980 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) (2014)
• English Teachers in a Postwar Democracy: Emerging Choice in London Schools, 1945-1965 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) (with Peter Medway, John Hardcastle and David Crook) (2014)
• Student Solidarity across Borders: Students, Universities and Refugee Crises Past and Present, History & Policy Paper (2015)
• 'Education for Service; Social Service and Higher Education in India and Britain, 1905-1919', History of Education Review 42 (2): 119-136 (2013)
• ‘“Fill full the mouth of famine”’: Voluntary action in Indian famine relief 1896-1901’, Modern Asian Studies 44 (4): 887-918 (2010)
• ‘From working parties to social work: Middle-class girls’ education and social service 1890-1914’, History of Education 38 (6): 761-777 (2009)