Research group Stockholm History Education Research Group – SHER

The History Education Research Group (SHER) at Stockholm University brings together research on people’s encounters with history in educational settings and other contexts. The group has a broad profile in history education and is interested in how historical knowledge is selected, represented, interpreted, and used – often in relation to history as a school subject in primary and secondary education.

SHER brings together theoretical and empirical research, as well as research concerned with the development of teaching and educational practice. A central ambition is to advance knowledge of the content, conditions, and possibilities of history teaching and learning, as well as of the significance of history as a subject for people’s understanding of the past, orientation in the present, and conceptions of the future.

The group’s collective research addresses, among other areas, difficult histories, including Holocaust and genocide education, human rights, and questions of sexuality, norms, and minority history. Other key areas include students’ epistemological beliefs about history, historical thinking and historical empathy, historical literacy, source interpretation, and uses of history in e.g. educational and visual media.