Widening Participation

The History Department have recently undertaken several initiatives to widen participation in the study of history, taking our passion for our subjects and studies to a larger, more diverse audience than ever before.

During the 2017/8 academic year we worked closely with our partners The Harris Federation, which operates successful academies in and around London. In December a group of Harris pupils visited King’s and participated in two mini history seminars with Professor Peter Heather (Medieval Europe) and Dr Christopher Dillon (Modern Germany). They also participated in a ‘Question and Answer’ session with five current history undergraduates who discussed the King’s undergraduate experience and their future career plans.

The Harris pupils greatly enjoyed the history seminars and found the Q&A panel to be both inspiring and reassuring. As one pupil noted in their feedback “Everything I learned is still applicable! Thank You!”

During the spring term, four members of the department visited Harris Battersea to hold two-hour seminars on their areas of expertise with school pupils. This gave them direct experience of a specialist university history seminar.

Dr Alice Rio’s January seminar on ‘Blood-taking and gift-giving: how to get ahead in the early middle ages’, for example, looked at how people in the early middle ages competed for honour and status. The seminar discussed how medieval people sought to present themselves in the best light in everyday decisions, such as gift selection, or whether or not to kill someone. The Harris pupils found seminars such as this to be a really interesting introduction to university study!