Tribute for Helen Snelson (1969-2024) - PGCE History Lead Tutor, Department of Education
Posted on 6 September 2024
Since her passing, we’ve read countless national and international tributes for Helen, all of which capture the very essence and the extraordinary impact of one of the best colleagues we had the privilege of working alongside. In truth, there are no words really for how much the PGCE team and other Department colleagues at York are going to miss her as a fellow history educator, a colleague and a friend.
Helen’s professional life reached stellar heights in her field. She joyfully and effortlessly influenced our country’s understanding of the discipline of history and on how a history curriculum can change children’s understanding of the past. From regularly writing in Teaching History as a passionate practising teacher to brilliantly presenting and inspiring history teachers at the Historical Association conference (including in various historical costumes), her love of history shone through to all who knew her.
Alongside her work at UoY, Helen served as a trustee of the Historical Association from 2016, chair of the HA Secondary Committee from 2018, and she became an Honorary Fellow of the HA in 2019. She was also pivotal in designing, and then delivering, national History Teacher Fellowships, and is well known for spearheading the One Big History Department blog for all practising history teachers. Her recent innovative work on Gypsy-Roma-Traveller histories, with the Borthwick archives, and on the history of climate change has already changed curriculum approaches in our region’s school history departments and beyond. Nationally, therefore, the history teaching profession will miss her passion, her extraordinary can-do attitude and her relentless determination to ensure the history voice is heard at all levels of government and education spheres.
Helen has left the UK, and indeed the wider world, with an important and critical legacy of work in her field, one which the Department of Education at UoY will endeavour to always keep aloft. We were very privileged to have Helen as our PGCE History lead, and as a department we will greatly miss her humour, wit and unique contributions.
If any UoY colleague would like to make a donation in Helen’s memory, the family have asked that donations are made either to St. Leonard's Hospice who looked after Helen, her family and friends with such skill and compassion, or to the Red Squirrel Survival Trust. Helen said that if she had a daemon, it would be a red squirrel.
Professors Kathryn Asbury, Vanita Sundaram and Claire Ball-Smith, Department of Education
2 Sept, 2024