Dr. Emily Charkin
Emily grew up in Oxford - countryside for the first 11 years and then the city centre. After University, she taught English in Italy and Spain. And then lived in London, working at the National Centre for Social Research and Common Purpose.
In her thirties, after having children, she studied for a MA in History at the Institute of Education, writing a dissertation about the experiences of children at a radical health centre, The Peckham Experiment, 1935-1950 and the anarchist Whiteway Colony in the 1930s.
Aged 40, she and Dan moved to Wilderness Wood. She works part-time at the wood and part-time continues her research. Recently she completed a PhD entitled ‘Building a community’: the role of manual work at Kilquhanity (1940-95) and Wennington (1940-75).
Emily also puts experimental ideas into practice - hosting home education groups, school enrichment programmes and mixed age work parties at the wood as an ‘instead-of-school’ way to give young people opportunities to learn from real projects and people.
Contact Emily on emilycharkin@yahoo.co.uk if you would like to read any of her articles or come to the library in The Barn at Wilderness Wood and read a copy by the fire.