Dr Isabelle Carter

BA (hons), MA, PhD

School of Education

Research Associate

Co-Investigator Roots and Futures Project

Isabelle smiling with a green background and a stiped tank top
Profile picture of Isabelle smiling with a green background and a stiped tank top
isabelle.carter@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Dr Isabelle Carter
School of Education
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
Profile

Isabelle gained her AHRC-funded PhD in History at the University of Sheffield in 2021 and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is currently a Research Associate with the ESRC-funded project School Meals Service: Past, Present – and Future? Isabelle works on the social history strand of the project, using oral history interviews with former pupils, catering staff members, and parents to explore the lived experience of the School Meals Service in twentieth-century Britain.

Isabelle has also been a member of the Roots and Futures project team at the University of Sheffield since 2021, first as a Research Associate and then as a Co-Investigator. Roots and Futures is a place-based heritage project co-produced with communities and organisations across the city of Sheffield.

Between 2021 and 2023, Isabelle taught modern British history at the University of Lincoln. She has taught a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in British and European history.

Research interests

Isabelle's research interests predominantly lie in the intersections between place, inequalities and everyday life in the context of twentieth-century Britain broadly, and northern England more specifically.

Her PhD explored multi-storey council housing in Sheffield and Manchester c. 1957-1997, focusing on local and national policy, the media, and residents' life stories to better understand the lived experience of historically marginalised places. Isabelle published an article in 2021 based on aspects of her PhD with the journal Urban History, titled 'Youth, race and the inner-city estate: narratives of everyday life in Manchester's Hulme, 1970–1994'.

As a member of the Roots and Futures project team, Isabelle has contributed to the design and delivery of consultations with under-served communities in Sheffield and facilitated links between policymakers and project partners. Isabelle has written about the project's findings in the 2021 publication 'Roots and Futures: Exploring the roots of communities old and new in North Sheffield' and the 2023 publication: 'Roots and Futures: Community Voices 2022-23', both of which can be accessed via the Roots and Futures website.

Teaching interests

Modern British History; Social History; Oral History.

Professional activities and memberships

Isabelle is a member of the Identity and Marginalised Communities resesearch cluster and the Education and Psychology research cluster in The School of Education.