In this post one of our organisers, Dr Caitríona Beaumont, offers her perspective on teaching voluntary action history across a range of topics and disciplines. 
As a lecturer in social history at London South Bank University I teach across a number of courses in the Department of Social Sciences. These include undergraduate degrees in Politics, Sociology and Criminology and the MSc. Criminology and Social Research Methods. Despite this rather disparate list of subject areas the common theme in all my teaching is the history of voluntary action in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My interest in focusing on the importance of voluntary action in different contexts relates to my own area of research expertise. When I am not teaching (or engaged in admin) I work on the history of female voluntary action in a range of mainstream and popular women’s organisations. These include the Mothers’ Union, the Women’s Institutes, the YWCA and the Townswomen’s Guilds.
Not surprisingly it is this interest in both researching and teaching voluntary action history that has led to my involvement in the Teaching Voluntary Action History Workshop. What myself, Helen McCarthy and Charlotte Clements hope to achieve from the second workshop on Saturday 28 February is the opportunity to share experiences of teaching, to discuss good practice and to contemplate innovative ways to use resources and develop interesting and challenging assessments. Looking further ahead we hope that the workshop will allow for the creation of new networks, which will further facilitate exchanges of ideas and good practice amongst academics teaching voluntary action history. Continue reading
Teaching Voluntary Action History 