Associate Professor (Teaching) in Holocaust and History Education

Dr Emma Aoife O'Brien

Emma is Associate Professor in Holocaust and History Education and has over 15 years of experience in the field of Holocaust education. Over the years she has spoken at teacher seminars and conferences in England, The Netherlands, Hungary, Croatia and Greece. Before specialising in Holocaust education, Emma was Head of History in a grammar school in Kent.

Prior to joining the Centre in 2010, she worked at Imperial War Museum London (IWM) and her last role was leading the Holocaust (formal) education provision. Working with both the IWM Holocaust Exhibition and Crimes Against Humanity exhibition in London, she led sessions for school groups, ITE groups and members of the Police and Army. Her work at the museum also included updating the 2009 IWM publication Reflections and revising the student audio guides for the Holocaust Exhibition.

 

Whilst at the Museum, Emma led the IWM Fellowship in Holocaust Education, a Masters-accredited international teacher development programme involving residential seminars in London and Jerusalem and site visits to Lithuania and Poland. During her time at the Museum, she also contributed to the UK delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), sitting on the Memorials and Museums Working Group.

 

Working at the Centre for Holocaust Education she teaches across all of the Centre’s professional development programmes from Initial Teacher Education (ITE) through to the Centre's online Masters module ‘The Holocaust in the Curriculum’. She has mentored on the Centre’s Beacon School Programme for teachers leading their schools in Holocaust education since 2013, and for seven years her main responsibility was overseeing the Centre's Core CPD offer 'What was the Holocaust, how do I teach it and why does it matter?'

In addition to teaching, Emma writes classroom resources and developed classroom material for the DfE funded national project 'Belsen 75'. Emma was the project manager for the Centre's work with colleagues at Yad Vashem in Israel to develop the Centre's first MOOC, 'Teaching the Holocaust: Innovative approaches to the challenges we face'.  She is currently Assistant Project Lead for the Centre working with UNESCO and ODIHR to develop an online course on antisemitism and is leading a newly established project team on the Centre’s new educational programme centred on the Kindertransport.

Emma represents the Centre on the Arolsen Archives UK Oversight Committee and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust Partnership Group. She also serves on the Educational Professional Advisory Committee for the Claims Conference (Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany) reviewing international applications for funding Holocaust education projects and teacher professional development.

Having worked in teacher professional development for over 15 years, Emma’s research interests focus on teachers’ lives and she has a particular interest in life history work. Her thesis for her Doctor in Education degree (EdD) focussed on the experiences of women teachers pursuing professional learning whilst raising their families. She is currently interested in exploring teachers’ experiences of teaching traumatic history.

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