Professor Ian Grosvenor

Ian Grosvenor is Emeritus professor of Urban Educational History at the University of Birmingham, England. Current research focuses on education, activism and art; education and the ecological turn; and cultural learning and community engagement.

Books include Assimilating Identities. Racism and Education in Post 1945 Britain (1997), Silences and Images. The Social History of the Classroom (1999) with Martin Lawn and Kate Rousmaniere, The School I’d Like (2003), School (2008) and The School I’d Like Revisited (2015) all with Catherine Burke, Materialities of Schooling (2005) with Martin Lawn, Children and Youth at Risk (2009) with Christine Mayer and Ingrid Lohmann, the Black Box of Schooling (2011) with Sjaak Braster and Maria Mar del Pozo Andrés and Making Education: Governance by Design (2018) with Lisa Rasmussen. With Tim Allender, Inés Dussel and Karin Priem he is editor of the De Gruyter book series Appearances – Studies in Visual Research. 

Between 2014 and 2021 he was Director of the Voices of War and Peace First World War Engagement Centre. Previous roles include Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Cultural Engagement and Head of the School of Education, University of Birmingham, Secretary General of the European Educational Research Association [EERA], founding convenor of EERA’s Network 17 History of Education, and Managing Editor of the international journal Paedagogica Historica, 2008-2020. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  

Current roles at the University include Chair of the Lapworth Museum Arts Council NPO Board; Committee Member University Collections; and Member Winterbourne Advisory Group.

Current External roles include Trustee of Birmingham Civic Society and co-Chair of the Heritage Committee and Committee member of the Friends of Birmingham Archives and Heritage (FoBAH).

Ian is interested in the following research topics:

• material cultures of schooling;
• cultural diversity and race equality;
• anti-racist and refugee education;
• black history;
• museum and heritage education; the teaching of history.

He currently supervises a number of students including the following:

• Izzy Mohammed - Public archives, Representation and Integration in Post-War, Multicultural Urban Contexts: Birmingham and Manchester
• Alison Laitner - Discovering Childrens’ Voices and Experiences; Changes from family to institutional care for children and young people with disabilities , Birmingham 1770 to 1870.
• Kate Spencer-Bennett - Libraries in Women’s Lives

Current research focuses on new ways of conceptualising and presenting the educational past through consideration of issues relating to space, design, technology, the visual in education, artefacts and identity formation.

Research projects include:

AHRC 2014-2016: Voices of War and Peace

This study day explored the Black community's contribution to the Great War.

AHRC award 2012-2016 Cultural Intermediation: connecting communities in the creative urban economy led by Dr Phil Jones, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Geography at the University of Birmingham. 

AHRC Museums and Galleries Research Grant award 2008-2010, ‘Suburban Birmingham: spaces and places: 1880-1960’ with Dr Richard Clay and Dr Fran Barry

British Academy 2009-2010, ‘Documentary Film in Educational Research’ with Dr Paul Warmington, Professor Martin Lawn, Dr Catherine Burke, Professor Frank Simon, Dr Bruno Vanobbergen, Dr Angelo van Gorp and Dr Jeremy Howard.

Heritage Lottery Fund 2012 Children’s Lives Research for an exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2012.

AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship 2007-2009, Birmingham Stories: from communities of interpretation to communities of understanding

He is Managing Editor of the international journal Paedagogica Historica, Secretary General of the European Educational Research Association and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.