Georgina Brewis

I am Professor of Social History at UCL Institute of Education. I am a social historian of higher education, voluntary action and humanitarianism in Britain and the wider world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and my new co-authored book called Student London: A New History of Higher Education in the Capital was published by UCL Press in 2026.

My research interests explore two main topics. The first considers the history of higher education and student life. My first book argued that voluntary action was central to the emergence of a student movement in the UK and internationally, and positioned 1960s and 1970s student community action as an alternative form of protest - see A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and Beyond 1880-1980 (Palgrave, 2014). With Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University) I have led several projects exploring the impact of the First World War on universities and investigating student culture in the aftermath of the war.

My contributions to the history of humanitarianism and voluntary action form a second, related strand of research. One completed project examines the history of humanitarianism through a moral economy lens and resulted in Humanitarianism in the Modern World: The Moral Economy of Famine Relief (Cambridge University Press, 2020, open access). My other recently completed book Transformational Moments in Social Welfare: What Role for Voluntary Action? (Policy Press, 2021) results from an ESRC funded project that explores debates about the role of voluntary action in social welfare provision in the 1940s and 2010s (ES/N018249/1, 2017-2020). I am also Director of a long-running British Academy Research Project (ARP), 'Archiving the Mixed Economy of Welfare in Britain', which seeks to raise awareness of the vulnerability of charity archives.