Professor Maurice Whitehead was educated at the University of Durham, qualified as a secondary school teacher at the University of Cambridge and taught at Wimbledon College, London, from 1976 until 1987.  In 1984, he completed his doctorate in educational history and was appointed to a lectureship in Education at the University of Hull in 1987 and to a senior lectureship there in 1995.  He was appointed Professor of Education at  Swansea in 2000. In 2004, following the closure of the University's Department of Education, he moved to the Department of History (now History and Classics) to pursue his teaching and research.

Professor Whitehead is a member of MEMO, Swansea's Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research.

Current research

Professor Whitehead’s research interests are in the historical development of education in a European context. He has a particular interest in English and Welsh recusants and their educational diaspora in continental Europe from the reign of Elizabeth I until the French Revolution. He is currently working on a monograph on the educational work of the English and Welsh Jesuits in continental Europe in the late eighteenth century.

Principal publications

Books

• (ed.), Held in Trust: 2008 Years of Sacred Culture (Stonyhurst: St Omers Press, 2008)
• (ed., with David Hartley), Teacher Education: Major Themes in Education (London and New York: Routledge, 2006)

     Vol. 1: Historical Aspects of Teacher Education from 1797 to 1905

     Vol. 2: Historical Aspects of Teacher Education from 1905 to 1990

     Vol. 3: Curriculum and Change

     Vol. 4: Professionalism, Social Justice and Teacher Education

     Vol. 5: Globalisation, Standards and Teacher Education

• The Academies of the Reverend Bartholomew Booth in Georgian England and Revolutionary America: Enlightening the Curriculum  (Lewiston NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1996) 
• Peter Newby: Eighteenth Century Lancashire Recusant Poet (Lancaster:University of Lancaster Centre for North-West Regional Studies, 1980)

Book-chapters & journal articles

• ' "Superior to the Rudest Shocks of Adversity": English Jesuit Education and Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1688-1832', in Mary Hilton and Jill Shefrin, eds., Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: Beliefs, Cultures, Practices (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 131-146
• ' "Con grandi difficoltà": le sfide educative della Compagnia di Gesù nella restaurata provincia inglese (1803-1842)', in P. Bianchini, ed., Morte e resurrezione di un Ordine religioso.  Le strategie culturali ed educative della Compagnia di Gesù durante la soppressione (1759-1814) (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2006), 89-108
• 'Jesuit Secondary Education Revolutionized: The Académie anglaise, Liège, 1773-1794', Paedagogica Historica, 40 (2004), 33-44
• ' "A Prolific Nursery of Piety and Learning": Educational Development and Corporate Identity at the Académie anglaise, Liège, and at Stonyhurst, 1773-1803', in T. M. McCoog, ed., Promising Hope: Essays on the Suppression and Restoration of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2003), 127-149
• ' "In the Sincerest Intentions of Studying": The Educational Legacy of Thomas Weld (1750-1810), Founder of Stonyhurst College', Recusant History, 26 (2002), 169-193
• 'Educational Turmoil and Ecclesiastical Strife: The Episcopal Career of Joseph William Hendren, 1848-1853', Recusant History , 25 (2000), 263-280
• 'A View from the Bridge: The Catholic School', in V. A. McClelland & M. Hodgetts, eds., From Without the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales 1850-2000 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,1999), 217-244
• 'Wealth Creation, Ethics and Education: The Career of Joseph Valens of Liverpool',  Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 145 (1996), 203-213   

Principal research awards, fellowships, & prizes

• Major Grant of $153,000 from the Spencer Foundation, Chicago, for a research project entitled From Suppression to Restoration: The Educational Work of the English ex-Jesuits in Continental Europe and Britain, 1773-1814, 1999-2002
• Adèle Mellen Prize ($1,000) for “Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship”, 1995, for The Academies of the Reverend Bartholomew Booth in Georgian England and Revolutionary America: Enlightening the Curriculum (1996)