Faheem Hussain, a Teacher Educator with the Institute’s Secondary Teacher Education Programme (STEP), participated in the 5th Annual Conference of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe (OHTE), held at the Council of Europe headquarters in Strasbourg .
The annual conference brought together history students, academics, policy makers and senior political figures to discuss the role of history in understanding the present and shaping the future in Europe. The 2025 theme, “History at All Costs?”, examined how economics has influenced societies throughout history and how studying past economic crises — such as the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis — can inform strategies for addressing current challenges.
At the event, the Observatory launched its second Thematic Report, “Economic Crises in History Teaching,” produced with education authorities from OHTE member states and experts from the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media / Georg-Eckert Institute, overseen by the OHTE Scientific Advisory Council.
The programme included plenary sessions, an Oxford-style debate between history students and policymakers, and keynote addresses on history, politics, and democracy.
At the conference, Faheem participated as a history educator who was part of the UK delegation at the Council of Europe. In the Department of Education at IIS, Faheem leads the Learning and Teaching components of the STEP programme. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA – UK), with research interests in initial teacher education and sensory history approaches to the study of past.
