Welcome to Objects of Empire.

This website is dedicated to supporting teachers use material culture to teach the history of empire. It has emerged from a collaboration between Dr Sarah Longair at the University of Lincoln and Sasha Smith, Head of Humanities at Sir Robert Pattinson Academy. We are sharing the results of our existing work and will be adding to it by bringing in more teachers, teacher trainees and others to contribute resources and ideas. Our aim is to enrich the teaching of empire in schools by using material culture and responding to the latest academic research.

Our collaboration started after Sarah delivered a lecture for the Be Bold History network, which you can see in the ‘How To’ page. Sasha then approached Sarah to discuss how to integrate objects into her teaching of empire. The resulting unit for Year 8 – ‘What can material objects tell us about the British Empire’ – proved a great success with teachers and pupils alike. More can be learned about how Sasha designed this module in the ‘How To’ page. Since then we have expanded the range of objects we use, delivered sessions for teacher trainees and run a Historical Association webinar series, the results of which you can see in Objects.

Our project demonstrates that objects inspire teachers and pupils in studying history, and teachers have found it empowering to address a potentially sensitive topic such as imperial history through objects. Students are accessing the latest historical research and developing skills of analysis which are now the norm in higher education. Please look further and contribute if you can!

Teacher quote: This unit feels like ‘proper’ history and I was excited to teach it.