24th January marks International Day of Education, with the theme for 2026 focusing on AI and education. To mark the occasion, our HFL book display highlights some historical research on access to education, and the development and dissemination of knowledge. Among these books are historical studies on segregated education, the impacts of war on learning, and AI technology in the classroom.
Alongside these historical perspectives, these books invite us to consider how today’s debates around artificial intelligence fit into longer histories of educational change and technological innovation. From the printing press to digital learning, new tools and perspectives have continually reshaped education and how we share knowledge. By exploring these books, we can place contemporary discussions about AI in education within a broader historical and social context of equitable access to quality education.
Books featured on the display from the top left:
“The impact of the First World War on British universities : emerging from the shadows” by John Taylor | “Scholars and sultans in the early modern Ottoman Empire” by Abdurrahman Atçıl | “Education and empire : children, race and humanitarianism in the British settler colonies, 1833-1880” by Rebecca Swartz | “The history of education under apartheid, 1948-1994 : the doors of learning and culture shall be opened” by Peter Kallaway | “Histories of scientific observation” by Lorraine Daston | “The men and women we want : gender, race, and the progressive era literacy test debate” by Jeanne D. Petit | “Education in Britain : 1944 to the present” by Ken Jones | “Jim Crow moves North : the battle over northern school desegregation, 1865-1954” by Davison M. Douglas | “In her hands : the education of Jewish girls in tsarist Russia” by Eliyana R. Adler | “The new empire of AI : the future of global inequality” by Rachel Adams | “The scientific life : a moral history of a late modern vocation” by Steven Shapin | “Brown v. Board of Education : a civil rights milestone and its troubled legacy” by James T Patterson | “Education and fascism : political identity and social education in Nazi Germany” by Heinz Sünker |
These e-book resources can be accessed via SOLO, which will require an Oxford University SSO login. Alternatively, they can be used through a Bodleian reader account for external readers who can access the material by connecting to the Bodleian Libraries Wi-fi network or logging on to the reader PCs within the library.
