Senior Adviser

Professor Stuart Foster

In his role as Executive Director, Stuart Foster provided strategic leadership for the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education from its inception in 2008 to the spring of 2025. During this period almost 40,000 secondary school teachers directly benefited from its internationally acclaimed programme of teacher professional development. He now works part-time for the Centre and serves as a Senior Adviser.

He has been centrally involved in all the Centre’s major research projects and studies. For example, under Stuart’s leadership, the Centre produced the UK’s first ever large-scale national study: Teaching About the Holocaust in English Secondary Schools: An empirical study of national trends, perspectives and practice (2009).  He also led the Centre’s ground-breaking national study, What Do Students Know and Understand About the Holocaust? (2016) in which nearly 10,000 young people participated. More recently, upholding the Centre’s emphasis on research-informed practice, he co-authored, Continuity and Change: Ten years of teaching and learning about the Holocaust in England’s secondary schools (2023).

 

Stuart also has numerous publications in the field of Holocaust education, including two major textbook studies.   He was also co-author of the world’s first research-informed textbook, Understanding the Holocaust: How and why did it happen? (2021) which has been distributed to approximately 3,000 secondary schools across England.  In addition, he was co-editor and co-author of Holocaust Education: Contemporary challenges and controversies, published by UCL Press (2020). 

 

Stuart has been an influential figure in history education at UCL’s Institute of Education since 2001 and has served as the Course Leader for the MA in Education (Citizenship, History and RE), tutored PGCE history students, and supervised a large number of doctoral candidates from an array of countries including Cyprus, Greece, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, UK, and the USA. From 2008 to 2011 he served as Head of the Academic Department of Arts and Humanities.

Stuart began his career in education as a history teacher, head of department and senior teacher in comprehensive schools in England; he then completed his PhD in curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas, Austin, USA. From 1996-2001, he was a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science Education at the University of Georgia, USA.

As a central figure in the field of history education nationally and internationally, Stuart is regularly invited to give keynote lectures to international audiences, and has addressed history teachers and academics in Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, South Korea, Sweden and the USA.  Stuart has written more than fifty scholarly articles and book chapters focused on teaching and learning history and he has authored or co-authored seven books.

He also has extensive experience of leading complex and large-scale educational programmes. For example, in addition to overseeing the work of UCL’s Centre for Holocaust Education, he served as the Executive Director of the British government’s £6.5 million flagship, First World War Centenary Battlefield Tours Programme from 2013-2020.  This national programme which centred on a 4-day educational visit to the key sites and battlefields in Belgium and France, involved more than 8,500 secondary students from 2,800 schools across the country.  More recently (2022-2025), Stuart has served as Senior Adviser to the ground-breaking research programme focused on Teaching about the British Empire, migration, and belonging in England’s secondary schools, which was informed by the perspectives of more than 1,000 teachers and 3,000 students.

 

Selected publications:

Continuity and Change: Ten years of teaching and learning about the Holocaust in England’s secondary schools (2023)

Understanding the Holocaust: How and why did it happen? (2021)

UCL Press book: Holocaust Education: Contemporary challenges and controversies (2020)

 

Foster, S. J. and Karayianni, E., “Research into Textbook Portrayals of National Socialism and the Holocaust:  Issues, Challenges and Future Directions.” In Fuchs, E and Bock, A., eds., Palgrave Handbook on Textbook Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) ISBN 978-1-137-53142-1.

Foster, S. J. and Karayianni, E., “Portrayals of the Holocaust in English History Textbooks, 1991-2016: Continuities, challenges and concerns.” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, 23, 3 (2017): 314-344. ISSN: 1750-4902.

 

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