In this post we hear from two historians involved in the creation of new resources, launched in late 2025, to support the teaching of slavery in schools.
In the opening section, Katie Donington. Abdul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn introduce their new co-authored book, Teaching Slavery. New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial Past, which brings together the latest academic research on Britain’s involvement in transatlantic slavery, with innovative thinking on the teaching of such challenging histories in the classroom.
In part two, Jesús Sanjurjo-Ramos and Joseph Smith highlight Teaching Slavery in Scotland, a new online resource in which teachers, academics, writers and creative professionals explore new ways to learn about the trade in enslaved African people.
Central to both projects is close, long-term collaborative working between academic historians and history teachers in schools.
With these resources, researchers seek to bridge the gap between ‘academic history and the classroom’, to support teachers, and to engage with the history of enslavement through research-informed practice and open-access materials.
The landscape of history education in the United Kingdom is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by over a decade of innovative partnerships between academic historians and history educators.
With the 2025 publication of the UCL Press resource, Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial Past, and the simultaneous launch of the ‘Teaching Slavery in Scotland’ (TSS) digital hub, there is now a concerted effort to bridge the gap between ‘academic history and the classroom’. These initiatives, while operating across different national contexts, share a commitment to ‘ethically and effectively engaging’ with the history of enslavement through research-informed practice and open-access materials.
By providing teachers with the time and space to engage intellectually with the latest historiography, these projects aim to support students in the fascinating task of better understanding the profound legacies of slavery in the world they inhabit today.
Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial Past
By Katie Donington
At the end of 2025 we launched Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial Past (UCL Press) as a freely available downloadable resource.
It is the first ever book length study on the topic of teaching slavery in the UK and the culmination of over a decade’s partnership between academic historians and history teachers. We hope it will contribute to a long overdue conversation about how, why and what we teach in relation to the history of transatlantic slavery in British schools.
Barriers to change
Transatlantic slavery has been widely taught in schools since the inception of the first National Curriculum in 1991, particularly after it was made mandatory in 2008 (although that was rescinded in 2014).
Initially much of the teaching focused on the United States and, after the 2007 commemoration of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, on the history of abolition.
These approaches marginalised the study of the significant connections between Britain and slavery. Moreover, despite the complexity of the subject and its sensitive implications for the classroom, there was little formal training or support offered to teachers beyond the production of resources.
Since 2007 a series of educational reports, including the TIDE-Runnymede report (2019) and recent work by the Portrait of the Teaching of the British Empire, Migration and Belonging project, have identified barriers to change and key recommendations for driving improved provision in this field:
- targeting initial teacher training provision
- access to subject specific continuous professional development
- collaborations between academics and educators
- developing inclusive curriculum and pedagogy
- free and accessible online material and resources
These are all features of the work behind and within our new book, Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial Past.
Supporting Teachers to Transform Practice
In 2019 the book’s authors worked with the Historical Association to develop a Teaching Fellowship in Transatlantic Slavery. Teachers were selected for their potential to become ambassadors in their field. They undertook a three-day residential and three-month online course which combined both historiographical and pedagogical aspects. This culminated in the production of resources which were made freely available on the Historical Association website.
The Fellowship created a vital forum for sharing ideas and experiences, engaging in critical and reflexive dialogue, and building a network of trust and collegiality. It gave teachers time and space away from their duties to intellectually engage with their subject and receive expert guidance in crafting new techniques for learning. It was a transformational experience as teacher Tom Allen wrote:
I feel as though this Fellowship was a profoundly important part of my development, not just as history teacher, but as a citizen of the UK, coming to terms with this country’s past
It has already affected my teaching and curricular decisions, as well as conversations with family, friends, and students.
The Fellows went on to produce exceptional work in their field including an article for Teaching History, new textbooks on slavery and empire, podcasts and participation in education conferences.
Fellow Katie Hunter was involved with the Teaching Slavery Scotland initiative (see below) which developed a teacher training programme and has just launched a resources website. Their work is included in Teaching Slavery which explores six enquiries, some of which were produced by the Fellows.
Enquiries range from teaching about the African empires of Asante and Benin to the impact of the slavery business on the English town of Reading. The book helps teachers to make sense of the resources by explaining the intellectual underpinning and planning decisions, allowing them to reflect on how they might change their own practice.
Embedding Principles: Curriculum and Pedagogy
The Fellowship and the book were based around a series of curricular and pedagogical principles which we believe offer a vital framework for teaching about slavery.
They reflect the partnership between academic historians and history educators, by offering a foundational basis for both historical and pedagogical knowledge, the combination of which is necessary for ethical and effective engagement with this topic in the classroom.
Research-informed principles for the teaching of the Holocaust inspired the construction of our own framework and approach. Some of the key curricular ideas include an emphasis on: African cultures prior to colonial contact; the impact of slavery on racial thinking; the gendered experience of slavery; survival and resistance; a critical approach to the representation and memory of slavery; and an engagement with the legacies of slavery. Pedagogical interventions are focused on the use of enquiries as a method for teaching, the inclusion of Black perspectives and sources, the importance of language and dialogue, and a critical reflection on positionality.
Looking to the Future
Innovative partnerships between academic historians and history educators, such as ours and that of Teaching Slavery Scotland, provide empowering work to embolden teachers to tackle challenging topics that help young people understand our complex present.
Enslavement and the formation of race is certainly one of the most demanding of these subjects. There is much scope for further research into how these histories are being taught in secondary schools and on the potential impact of Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial Past.
Teaching Slavery in Scotland: A New Digital Hub for History Education
By Jesús Sanjurjo-Ramos
We are delighted to announce the launch of the new, comprehensive website for Teaching Slavery in Scotland (TSS), a major milestone in our project to transform how the history of Atlantic slavery is taught in Scottish schools.
Since 2021, TSS has operated as a collaborative network of teachers, academics, and creative practitioners. With this new digital launch, we have consolidated years of research, pedagogical development, and pilot work into a single, open-access hub.
The website is designed to be a definitive resource for educators, providing immediate access to rigorous, historically grounded materials that address Scotland’s specific — and often obscured — role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonial slavery.
Bridging the Gap: From Archive to Screen
The central ambition of the new platform is to bridge the gap between academic history and the classroom. We know that teachers often lack the time to trawl through archives or keep pace with the latest historiography. The website addresses this by curating primary sources, high-quality illustrations, and lesson plans that are directly mapped to the Scottish curriculum (Broad General Education [BGE], National 5, and Higher).
A standout feature of the new site is our suite of video resources, ‘Historians in the Archives’ and ‘Historians in Conversation’. These films demystify the historical process, showing students not just what we know, but how we know it.
By bringing the archive onto the screen, we allow learners to engage directly with the evidence of Scotland’s involvement in the Caribbean and the wider Atlantic world, challenging the erasure that has often characterised national narratives.
Pedagogy at the Core: The Seven Principles
The website is not merely a repository of content; it is a pedagogical intervention. Navigating the site, users will encounter our ‘Seven Principles’ — the ethical and intellectual framework that underpins all our materials. Whether exploring ‘Africa and the Slave Trade’ or ‘Resistance in the Caribbean’, the digital resources are designed to move students beyond passive consumption.
They encourage a reading of sources ‘against the grain’ to uncover marginalised perspectives and to understand enslaved people not merely as victims of a system, but as complex historical actors who developed strategies for survival and resistance.
A Timely Intervention
The launch of Teaching Slavery in Scotland comes at a critical moment for history education in Britain.
As we release these digital resources, we are mindful of the wider scholarly momentum in this field, exemplified by the recent publication of Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial History (UCL Press, 2025). We see our digital platform as a companion to such scholarship — a practical toolkit that allows the findings of this new wave of imperial history to be embedded immediately into daily teaching practice.
We invite all members of the Royal Historical Society, and particularly those working in education, to explore the site.
It’s our hope this digital hub will support teachers in delivering difficult histories with confidence, Drawing on this new resource, we also hope future generations of students develop the critical tools to understand the profound legacies of slavery in the world they inhabit today.
About the authors
Dr Katie Donington is Senior Lecturer In Black, African & Caribbean History at The Open University. A social and cultural historian of Caribbean slavery and its legacies, Katie’s publications include the co-authored Legacies of British slave-ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (2014) and the monograph, The Bonds of Family: Slavery, Commerce and Culture in the British Atlantic World (2020). Her most recent publication, co-authored with Abdul Mohamud, Robin Whitburn and Nicholas Draper is Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial Past (UCL Press, 2025), which is available Open Access.
Abdul Mohamud is a Lecturer in History Education at the Institute of Education, University College London. He is co-author, with Katie Donington, Robin Whitburn and Nicholas Draper, of Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial Past (2025).
Dr Robin Whitburn is a Lecturer in History Education at the Institute of Education, University College London. He is co-author, with Katie Donington, Abdul Mohamud and Nicholas Draper, of Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain’s Colonial Past (2025).
Dr Jesús Sanjurjo-Ramos is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) & Chancellor’s Fellow in Atlantic World History at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, A historian of the Atlantic World, Jesús’s research examines the intersections of radical politics, state violence, and systems of social control within the Spanish empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His publications include the monograph, In the Blood of our Brothers: Abolitionism and the End of the Slave Trade in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, 1800–1870 (2021). Jesús is also a Councillor and Trustee of the Royal Historical Society.
Dr Joseph Smith is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Stirling and Project Lead (2024-25) for the Teaching Slavery in Scotland project.
