Students During and After the Great War

Join Georgina Brewis and Daniel Laqua as they explore the impact of the First World War on university life, particularly the changing size and social diversity of the student population.

Young people fought and fell in unprecedented numbers during the First World War (1914-18). In this talk, Georgina Brewis and Daniel Laqua will focus on one group of young people, namely university students, highlighting the effect that the conflict had on their lives.

Volunteering and conscription had a drastic impact on the size and nature of student cohorts. After 1918, universities were transformed by an influx of ex-servicemen, and new funding arrangements enabled students from a wider range of backgrounds to attend university.

The talk will emphasise the arrangements for, and perspectives of, the ex-service students, drawing on research from the National Archives and six different higher education institutions.

Since 2017, Brewis and Laqua have jointly run a number of projects on student life in the aftermath of the First World War, thanks to funding from the Arts and Humanities Research CounciL (AHRC), the Society for Educational Studies (SES) and the British Educational Research Association (BERA).

About the speakers

Georgina Brewis

Georgina Brewis is a Professor of Social History at the Institute of Education at UCL. She is a social historian of higher education, voluntary action and humanitarianism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Daniel Laqua

Daniel Laqua is a historian of modern and contemporary Europe and is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University. His research concerns the movements and organisations whose activities transcended national boundaries, such as socialists, anarchists, pacifists, humanitarians, student activists and anti-racist campaigners.