Susan Steward

I am an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History and Art History; and I am associated with the Centre for East Anglian Studies. My current research interests are concerned with the history of educational policies and practices in Norwich and Norfolk as well as the educational institutions (all stages) found there.

My PhD (King’s College London, 2023), in Geography and Education, focused on the combined influences of neighbourhood and secondary school in shaping the life-chances of young people living in north Norwich in the New Millennium. In the study I used a ‘life-course approach’ – making particular use of the components of ‘time‘ and ‘place’ - i.e. the historical and social contexts in which lives are lived - to show how these impact on individual identity, sense of belonging and life direction.

In my research I use oral history interviews and analyses (and am a member of the Oral History Society) as well as quantitative approaches that include secondary analyses of large-scale, administrative datasets to track individuals over time.

I was a teacher of mathematics in a number of Inner London secondary schools before moving back to Norwich (where I grew up) in the late 1990s. Back in Norwich, I taught GCSE Maths to adults returning to learning. This rekindled my passion for making maths more accessible and welcoming for all and deepened my commitment to the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities.

After completing a part-time MSc in Social Research Methods and Statistics in City University, London I started working in academic research – firstly in EDU at UEA working with Prof Elena Nardi, then in the Faculty Of Education, University of Cambridge. My research covered a number of areas: classroom practice (particularly Maths but also History), theories of teaching and learning, schools in ‘challenging circumstances’, teachers’ working lives and the link between creativity and wellbeing for children and young people.

In 2018 I moved from Norwich to Lowestoft (a Suffolk seaside town) where I became involved in local heritage initiatives; these included promoting Heritage Open Days, researching the history of the local area including my own grade II* listed house and the Hanging Gardens of north Lowestoft.  Alongside, I worked and researched part-time in Suffolk Archives, Ipswich and am now the chairperson of a new organisation called Suffolk Women’s History Network (open to anyone interested in women’s history in Suffolk).