معرفی
Natasha Robinson is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, conducting critical research on social cohesion and identity formation in post-apartheid South Africa, with specific focus on history curriculum and its impact on students' understanding of structural privilege.
Her academic background includes a BSc in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics (2012) and an MSc in Comparative and International Education from the University of Oxford (2015). During her MSc studies, she worked as a research assistant to Dr. David Johnson on the DFID-sponsored TESS-India teacher training program, collecting survey data from 1,000 students and interviews with 53 teachers across 15 schools in Karnataka.
Robinson's research spans social cohesion, post-apartheid identity formation, history curriculum development, teacher education, and educational policy. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in South Africa examining how history is taught in schools and its impact on students' understanding of racial identity. Her work extends across multiple countries including India, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, investigating relationships between schooling and religious intolerance, comparative learning outcomes in different school systems, and teacher professional development.
Her recent publications reveal a consistent scholarly focus on how educational systems perpetuate or challenge structural inequalities. Her 2024 work on Coloured identity in South African textbooks demonstrates how historical erasure leads to identity shame among students, while her earlier research on teacher quality in South Africa identifies systemic challenges in breaking the 'vicious schooling cycle' that affects educational outcomes.
- British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship
Robinson receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the British Academy. She has worked as a freelance researcher for multiple organizations including the OECD, Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention, JET Education, and Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Her research methodology combines ethnographic observation, curriculum analysis, and longitudinal interviews to produce nuanced understandings of complex educational challenges in post-conflict societies.
