World Education Fellowship: War and Peace

As a progressive, pacifist organisation established in the 1920s, the WEF (or NEF as it was then known) soon experienced the worldwide political shift of the 1930s and 1940s. The WEF then enjoyed a resurgence during the immediate post-war period. With an international scope, the collection can be used to learn about the impact of these politics on ordinary people around the world. Highlights include:

• Post-1945 resurgence in the WEF in various countries: use the correspondence between the headquarters in London and members in many other countries including Japan, Germany & Poland
• Civil war: the headquarter's correspondence with individual members around the world can be used to gain an understanding of life in a number of countries experiencing civil war including China, Sir Lanka
• Peace movements: read the proceedings of international conferences on themes such as 'Learning to live together' (1936), 'Education in a world of Nations (1941), 'The role of education in developed and developing countries for international understanding and peace' (1982) and 'Education for a world family' (1994)
• Empire: trace the end of the British Empire through correspondence with individuals living in India, Pakistan, Ceylon/Sir Lanka, and South Rhodesia/Zimbabwe
• Post-1945 politics: in particular, find out about the WEF's role in the establishment of UNESCO and its ongoing work with the organisation
• Human rights: use the papers from the Fellowship's project researching how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being taught in schools in the early 1950s 

The WEF archive is one of our most popular collections and is often used by academics from all over the world. Recently the collection has been used to research:

• Children's rights - including the Children's Charter
• Transnational connections of historians in Western Europe
• Employment of female teachers in the UK after the end of the Second World War
• Work of individual sections around the world
• Ideologies of the NEF/WEF - particularly the discussions of the annual international conferences held during the 1920s and 1930s

The WEF catalogue has been split into two sections to denote when material was transferred to the archives. It can therefore be more difficult to search across, so we have generated some lists to enable easier access. Click on the link for the full list on the following series of papers: conferences, projects, sections (by country), and publications