The Department

We aim for a high-quality history education, to help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past in relationship with the wider world, rather than at the centre of it. We strive to inspire pupils’ curiosity about the past and equip them to ask perceptive questions, weigh evidence and sift arguments. By engaging with historical scholarship and by thinking critically about the past, our pupils come to understand with the complexity of people’s lives in the past and therefore become empathetic students who aspire to live lives in tune with our FCJ values of excellence, justice and dignity.

Pen portraits

Mrs S Davies

Mrs Davies is the subject leader for History. She graduated with an MA Hons in Medieval History and an M Litt in Historical Research from the University of St Andrews. Before becoming a teacher, she trained as a solicitor and practised commercial law in London, finally seeing the light in 2007. She has taught at Upton since 2008. Mrs Davies loves medieval history and has a particular interest in the 11^th and 12^th centuries, both in England and Sicily. She is also very much at home in the outdoors, camping and hill walking, and helping out with the school’s Duke of Edinburgh programme. She combined this with her love of reading and writing in 2018 when she won a place at the Rural Writing Institute run by James Rebanks and Kathryn Aalto, where she also developed an interest in rural and agricultural history. Mrs Davies is therefore never happier than when she is looking at medieval illuminated manuscripts showing the labours of the months.

Dr E Campbell

Dr Campbell has a BA Hons in History and Archaeology and an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of Reading, where she also wrote her PhD thesis on 'The Accusation of Deicide in Christian Literature of the 1st to 4th Centuries AD'. Dr Campbell loves all history, in particular social history, archaeological remains and anthropological development. She enjoys reading and teaching about ancient civilisations and the classical era, medieval and Renaissance history, and anything to do with the witch-craze, the Holocaust, the history of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. Dr Campbell also enjoys historical cooking and historical re-enactment. She is the source of all historical costumes worn in the history department.

Mrs A M Wood

Mrs Wood studied BA Hons History at the University of Liverpool, where she particularly enjoyed studying the social history of Britain during World War I and the dictatorships of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. She lives in Upton and loves local history, so she researched the area’s history and is our resident expert on the history of both the village and the school. Mrs Wood very much enjoys social history and the history of the European witch craze, which she teaches at A-level.