01 May 2018
Archiving Activism Website
PhD placement students, Rachel Tavernor and Catherine Oliver, in collaboration with the British Library, are launching a new website. In this post, Rachel discusses her work encountering stories of housing activism in the British Library. Later this year, Catherine will launch a new section of the website on food activism and will discuss a new British Library acquisition of the Richard Ryder archive. We hope this collaborative initiative will grow with new sections added showing the diversity of our British Library Collections.
The brief for my time with the British Library was to investigate 20th and 21st Century anti-poverty activism in the the British Library Collections. In particular, to make connections between archives and to explore the value of the British Library’s holdings as a whole. I am not a historian, nor an archivist, so my approach to working with the collections was informed by my background in the arts, as well as my own involvement with institutional and grassroots activism. Having worked with smaller archives, I was interested in exploring how radical and rebellious voices are preserved in a large scholarly institution. Before working with the British Library, I had wrongly assumed that institutional voices would be the focus of the collections. While these voices are dominant, and at times privileged, the rebels in the archives are also there to encounter.
After a preliminary mapping of the collections and available material (there was lots), I narrowed the focus of my research to housing activism in the UK. Struggles for decent and affordable housing, with secure and fair tenancies, are at the forefront of many anti-poverty movements today. The decline of social housing, rises in private rents and poor living conditions, are a catalyst for many forms of activism (demonstrations, squatting, housing cooperatives and rent strikes).
One of the greatest strengths of researching activism in the British Library Collections is the diverse range of materials, from personal papers to government documents. Housing activism, as with many political struggles, stretches across institutional, community and mediated spaces. The Library’s collections offer ways to explore the everyday experiences of activism, preserved in oral histories, diaries and letters. Alongside examining how campaigns are shaped by, or in reaction to, housing policies. Researchers can trace these differing, and at times contradictory, narratives throughout the collections. By exploring these stories in tandem, the public have the opportunity to listen to these voices, and explore them alongside one another, to weave new histories, and perhaps new stories of housing activism.
While exploring the different collections archived at the British Library, I also conducted a small research project on ways to archive contemporary forms of activism. It was a privilege to conduct this research, which included interviewing archivists at feminist libraries, housing activists and academics that engage with archives of activism. You can read a section of the report on our new website. One of the themes that emerged in these interviews was that archives are a living resource, which can inspire and influence contemporary forms of activism. However, many people may experience different barriers to accessing materials archived at institutions like the British Library. It was these conversations that inspired Sarah, Catherine and I to collaborate on a website that would act as a guide to materials archived at the British Library. We hope that the Archiving Activism website may inspire people to further engage with some of the histories of housing activism, as well as the British Library Collections. If you have an idea for a new section or would like to contribute, please email: [email protected].
With thanks to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my placement at the British Library and to all the copyright holders for granting us permission to publish images of the items archived in the Collections.
28 February 2018
Legal Deposit in 12 panels
Last month, Olivia Hicks completed a 3 month PhD placement at the Library, investigating our collections of 21st century British comics. You can read more about how this project started in Olivia's blog post at http://blogs.bl.uk/socialscience/2017/12/21st-century-british-comics.html. In this post, Olivia describes the creation of a comic for comics creators, explaining Legal Deposit - and helping to build our collections.
Olivia Hicks is a second year PhD student at the University of Dundee. Her PhD focuses on the superheroine in British and American girls' comics. Her favourite superhero is the Spoiler, alias of Stephanie Brown, because they both love waffles and are penniless students.
For the first two months of my placement here in the Library, I kept things fairly academic. I regularly went into the reading room, digging up old zines and small press comics – everything from roughly printed, handmade artefacts to glossy, professional-looking publications. I supplemented my research on 21st century British small press comics with plenty of serious and studious academic reading, learning from the grand-daddies of British comics scholarship, David Huxley and Roger Sabin. I complemented this by compiling my data into pretty (if slightly incomprehensible) graphs, which intricately detailed the gender and regional location of each creator I came across. My aim was to use ‘best of British comics’ anthologies as a representative sample for the comics industry; to try and gain an understanding of who was producing comics, and where.
Of course, these books are inherently curatorial, which problematizes the use of them as definitive statements on the UK comics scene. As a humanities student, this made them even more fascinating; what was the vision of UK comics that people were choosing to present. I spent my days poring over the editorials, introductions and statements of intent which accompanied these volumes. They provided a view of Britishness that was varied, and, in the volumes published in the wake of Brexit, increasingly unstable. However, because the Library’s collection of 21st century comics is both overwhelmingly large and also somewhat incomplete, anthologies represented a manageable microcosm for me to examine over my placement.
This was all well and good, if a little numbers heavy and dry for a final report. But this was only the first two months of my placement. The final month was completely different.
Ian, my supervisor, agreed to let me try and aid the Library’s collecting by creating a comic to raise awareness amongst comics creators of the legal deposit system, and that it is a legal requirement for them to deposit their work in the Library. The final month my desk space, already quite messy, became swamped in pencilled pages and I could regularly be found at my desk, headphones in, inking something which was at first, quite incomprehensible to the rest of the office, but which has slowly morphed into a wee comic which is silly, colourful, but packed to the gills with information about the legal deposit. The completed comic is now displayed above my (still messy) desk, and hopefully will serve as a reminder for the next PhD student to not be afraid to get creative with the placement. While my report findings will interest relatively few, the comic has taken on a life of its own in the office, and has encouraged lots of interest in the Library’s online and physical comics collection. By finding a creative angle to compliment your more serious output, you can broaden the audience for your research and get more people engaged, which is the aim for any academic, and indeed, for the Library as an institution. What can I say, the sky is blue, water is wet and people love comics!
All images in this post from The Legal Deposit and You, by Olivia Hicks (coming to the British Library's website soon)
02 August 2017
Bringing Voices Together: Inclusivity in Independent Publishing in Contemporary Britain, 7th September
Chantelle Lewis is a PhD student working at the British Library on a project on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) publishing. In this post, Chantelle describes her project and a forthcoming event at the Library.
My name is Chantelle Lewis and I am a PhD student in the Sociology department at Goldsmiths College. My research is focused on the lived experiences of mixed race families in mono-cultural British towns. Since beginning my PhD, I have been interested in 'race' in Britain, racialised inequalities and the legacies of colonialism. I am keen to become a public sociologist emphasising how sociological research can help shape important social policies.
I am currently working as a PhD placement researcher within the Contemporary British Publications team at the British Library. The title of my placement is ‘Independent, D-I-Y, and activist BAME publishing, in print and online, in 21st century Britain’. I am interested in the current production of inclusive publications, and how the Library can better engage with independent publishers and activists invested in widening representation of writers of colour.
I began by using the Library’s online catalogue to assess its holdings of independent and activist publishing committed to writers of colour. Following this, I met with writers, publishers and activists, and asked them about their experience of supporting independent expression in print and online. The result of these meetings will be a networking event at the British Library titled 'Bringing Voices Together'. I was inspired to organise Bringing Voices Together after the project illuminated devolved literary practices which could help structure a pragmatic response by the British Library.
The event will bring together people from the arts, literary, and activist world, together with staff from the British Library. The group will include people invested in the development of platforms for diverse forms of expression, as many face similar obstacles in a predominantly mono-cultural industry.
Whilst meeting with writers, publishers and activists, I began to feel like there were key people I was speaking to who could benefit by connecting with others committed to inclusivity. Inspired by the on-going project run by Birkbeck History department - History Acts , where historians meet with activists to discuss the possibility of collaboration, I was keen to do something similar as part of my placement. As well as having writers and publishers involved, there will be academics and researchers at the event. I am hopeful that this will allow for interdisciplinary discussions on past and present expression by writers of colour.
Part of Bringing Voices Together will be to gather information for the British Library’s Contemporary Britain web pages on independent publishers who have committed to writers of colour in print and digital formats. This will serve as a starting point for the Library to become actively engaged with the varied formations of contemporary publishing in Britain. This information is also intended to help bookshops and public libraries connect with different voices, as well as offering more wide-ranging options for users of the Library. We’ll update this post with more details after the event.
Over the coming weeks, there will be a series of guest blog posts from myself and some of the people I have met who are engaged with inclusive independent publishing. Alongside the updates to the Contemporary Britain web pages, these articles will show that Bringing Voices Together is intended to be action driven, coupled with giving a much needed platform to different modes of expression. It also contributes to the notion of legacy and how collaboration can be at the forefront of change.
The fusion of attendees and speakers from publishing, literary, academic and activist backgrounds will allow a range of stakeholders to meet and debate the contemporary issues in publishing and the innovative ways these are being addressed. This will lead to a celebration of resourceful production which has been rewarded by the widening presence of public appreciation. It will also comment on the positive aspects of independent publishing and the opportunities it can present for inclusive expression.
The event gives all involved the opportunity to contribute to a conversation on inclusionary practices in publishing. The principle aim of the afternoon will be to provide recommendations on how the British Library can become more closely involved with writers of colour in independent publishing.
Chantelle Lewis BSc, MA and PhD candidate in Sociology
01 March 2017
Women’s Marches Echo Suffragette Struggles: Campaigns, Cats and Collections
By Rachel Tavernor, PhD Researcher, University of Sussex.
On 21 January 2017, millions of people across the world marched for gender, racial and economic equality. The recent Women’s Marches are the latest chapter in a long fight against misogyny and national and international patriarchy. The heritage of these struggles was echoed by the campaigners who dressed as suffragettes, and carried placards that reminded us that these struggles have been fought before:
“I will not go quietly back to the 1950s!”
“My arms are tired from holding this sign since the 1970s”
Women's March on London, 2017.
Recent events have brought the inequality women experience on a daily basis to the fore. Whilst reflecting on, and reacting to these political changes, I was completing a PhD Placement at the British Library which included researching stories of the suffragette movement. For me, the resistances, rebels and revolutions archived in the Library’s collections became a source of hope. At a time of political uncertainty, my time spent reading suffragette letters, news reports and protest ephemera, were a reminder to me that histories are made by both politicians and protests.
Suffragette Struggles
Suffragettes, like many campaigners, marched to demonstrate the strength of their movement and to pressure the government for political action. The demonstrations were also used as a space to mobilise the public. Many marched with striking and bold banners to communicate their campaign. In June 1908, some 40,000 women marched in London to pressure Herbert Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister, to support the women’s suffrage bills in parliament. However, Asquith maintained an aggressive anti-suffragist position. The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) retaliated by adopting “more violent, law-breaking deeds” (Purvis 2016). In the following years, the suffragettes’ militant approach was met with police brutality and frequent arrests were made. Yet, the women were not treated as political prisoners, which ensured better conditions and would have acknowledged that their acts were political, but as ordinary criminals. Incarcerated suffragettes surreptitiously produced letters detailing their lives on toilet tissue. In the British Library collections, you can read some of the letters that have been preserved (2 files).
In 1909, imprisoned Marion Dunlop, a member of the WSPU, began a hunger strike with the motto ‘Release or Death’. Several days into her hunger strike, Dunlop was released from prison, as authorities feared that she may die and become a martyr. Many suffragettes went on hunger strike. However, authorities soon decided that imprisoned suffragettes, when necessary, would now be force fed. This was a practice that was previously only used on clinically insane patients in asylums (Williams 2008). Suffragettes’ communicated their accounts of force feeding to the public, which shamed the government.
“The pain was so horrible I felt as if my nose was being pulled off, and I struggled violently”
Quoted from an account of force feeding (The Suffragette 1913)
On 25 April 1913, the authorities stopped force feeding and introduced the Prisoner’s Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act (commonly known as the Cat and Mouse Act). Once suffragettes reached a level of extreme weakness, they were released from prison, watched by authorities and re-arrested as soon as they had recovered from their hunger strike. The authorities positioned themselves as the watchful cat that was ready to pounce on the suffragette mouse.
Pussycat Power
Poster, Made by the Women’s Social and Political Union (1914)
In posters, produced by the WSPU, the Cat and Mouse Act (1913) was used to further the suffragettes fight for equality. The poster represented the male Liberal government as a savage cat, which the public needed to ‘keep out’. Suffragettes represented themselves as vulnerable women at the mouth of an aggressive and abusive government. The posters were popular and “[p]art of the reason for the lasting power and fame of the image may be the ways it overturns long-established associations between women and cats” (Amato 2015: 102).
Anti-Suffragette Postcards (circa 1908)
Palczewski, Catherine H. Postcard Archive. University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls, IA.
Prior to the Cat and Mouse Act (1913), postcard publishers that opposed gender equality, represented suffragettes as irrational cats. The gendered representation of cats, and their association to the domestic sphere, was used to “portray suffragettes as silly, infantile, incompetent, and ill-suited to political engagement” (Wrenn 2013). The relative cheapness of the postcard, and the humour used, ensured that the images widely circulated (similar to internet memes).
Humour was also used by the suffragettes to subvert gendered prejudices. Suffragette Annie Kenney recalls that they were taught “always to get the best of a joke, and to join in the laughter with the audience even if the joke was against us” (in Cowman 2007: 278). Campaigners’ ability to deploy humour, to subvert messages and to undermine politicians are tactics that are still used today.
Top: Dale Cruse, January 21, 2017, Women’s March San Francisco, Creative Commons 2.0
Bottom: January 21, 2017, Women’s March London
The placards, hats and costumes produced for the Women’s Marches show how people can creatively fight prejudices. Like the suffragettes, pussycats prominently featured in the visual representations of the campaign, in response to comments that Donald Trump made about women. Campaigners crafted ‘pussyhats’ and placards to fight back against this dehumanising and sexually oppressive view of women.
Archiving Activism
Unlike large NGO organised demonstrations that distribute branded placards, the Women’s Marches represented a range of grassroots protest voices. In the UK, the Bishopsgate Institute recognised the importance of archiving these placards: “people took to the streets to highlight the particular issues they were passionate about… In years to come, the placards and messages from this March will be essential in understanding the concerns of large sections of the UK population at the beginning of 2017” (Dickers 2017). Not only are the subjects of the placards of interest but also how they are made. The time campaigners spent knitting hats, painting signs and sewing costumes, contribute to understanding the craft of the protest.
The Women’s Marches across the world were primarily organised and promoted online. They were also documented on websites and social networks: on Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and blogs. The way in which activism is organised, and represented, further contribute to understanding the politics and practices of a movement. Civil rights campaigner Angela Davis, in her Women’s March speech in Washington, said “history cannot be deleted like web pages” (Davis 2017). Davis’ speech was a call for people, as agents of history, to resist the Trump administration. For me, it was also a reminder that the preservation of our protests are also vulnerable.
Webpages are constantly changing and can be deleted but they can also be preserved in archives. Since 2013, the British Library archive the entire UK domain every year (websites that end with .uk), which can be accessed via the reading room computers at the Library. The Library also has permission, under the terms of the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations (2013), to archive websites published in the UK (which do not end with ‘.uk’, for example, the Women’s March on London website). However, this is a manual process and the UK Web Archive invite YOU to nominate websites that are published in the UK but are not part of the UK domain. In doing so, you can contribute to preserving the webpages that document stories of sisterhood, struggle and solidarity, in the hope that these archives will inspire people who could be part of the next chapter of the movement.
International Women’s Day 2017
On 8 March 2017, the British Library is hosting a conversation on the power and potential of archiving feminist movements with Jill Liddington, Abi Morgan, Heidi Safia Mirza and Deborah Withers. Margaretta Jolly, project director of Sisterhood and After: An Oral History of the Women’s Liberation Movement, will chair this panel of influential feminists as they debate questions of politics, representation and preservation.
The Living Knowledge Network are hosting live-streams of this event at libraries in Middlesbrough and Exeter.
Rebels in the Archives is part of a series of events to celebrate International Women’s Day.
16 January 2017
2017 / 2018 British Library PhD Placements
Rachel Tavernor is a Media and Cultural Studies PhD Researcher at the University of Sussex. In this post, she discusses her PhD Placement at the British Library.
At the start of 2016, I did not imagine that I would be finishing the year at the British Library. For the last three months, I have been based in their Research Development team, as part of their new PhD Placement Programme.
My placement focused on exploring twentieth and twenty-first century anti-poverty activism in the British Library Collections. After a preliminary mapping of the archives, and discovering how much material was available, I narrowed the focus of my placement to housing activism. Struggles for decent and affordable housing, with secure and fair tenancies, are at the forefront of many anti-poverty movements and are often led by women. I developed two strands of the project to explore the ways in which radical, feminist, and at times illegal, protest actions are archived.
Firstly, I traced housing activism, including rent strikes, squats and housing cooperatives, across the British Library Collections. Working with diverse materials, including oral histories, manuscripts, music and news media, I was able to map the differing voices in the archive. In particular, investigating the tensions between protesters, mainstream media and government narratives. A guide to the materials found in the collections will be available on a new project website, Archiving Activism (launching in Spring 2017), which will include images of relevant collection items.
Secondly, I developed a small research project on the practices of archiving activism. To understand and propose ways to archive activism, I conducted a series of nine interviews. Many very enjoyable hours were spent listening to campaigners, feminist archivists and academics who engage with archives of activism. The interviews informed an internal report that I produced for the British Library on potential ways to archive contemporary activism.
Image: The gates of the British Library.
We will be discussing archives, activism and feminism movements on 8 March 2017 with a panel discussion on Rebels in the Archives. One of the privileges of working with the Library was the opportunity to invite inspiring feminists, Jill Liddington, Abi Morgan, Heidi Safia Mirza and Deborah Withers, to contribute to this event (booking now open).
I recently presented my research project to PhD students at the annual CHASE conference, Encounters, and to British Library staff as part of the British Library Bitesize Talk Series. Both events gave me the opportunity to share my research and reflect on my time at the British Library. For those of you considering applying for a PhD Placement in 2017, here are my reasons for taking part:
- Research Skills: you get a chance to use the skills that you’ve learnt conducting your PhD research in a new environment. You will also learn new research skills by working on a short-term project with industry outputs.
- Rich Resources: you get the time to explore the rich resources of the British Library Collections. You also get to find out about the resources that are yet to be made public or are soon to be acquired… watch this space for some exciting new acquisitions.
- Public Engagement: you get to engage people with your research and the British Library Collections. You may have the opportunity to create your own event, possibly presenting your research or supporting the Library with their large events programme.
- Colleagues and Collaborators: you get to work with some fantastic colleagues who are passionate about the British Library and research. You also get to be part of a cohort of PhD Placement researchers and learn about a wide range of research that is conducted at the Library.
- Inspiration: finally, the British Library is packed with inspiring people, both past and present. I return to my PhD research this week with new ideas, skills and experiences.
The British Library have just published a new call for applicants for 2017/2018 British Library PhD Placements. Included in the programme are placements on:
- Independent, DIY, and Activist BAME Publishing, in Print and Online, in 21st century Britain
- 21st Century British Comics
- Researching the EU Referendum Through Leaflet and Web Archive Collections
If you have any questions about the placements, contact [email protected]
01 July 2015
Call for Papers
The importance of early years, childhood and adolescence: Evidence from longitudinal studies
Monday 30 November 2015
British Library Conference Centre
www.closer.ac.uk/event/conference2015
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 27 July 2015
________________________________________________________
We are delighted to invite proposals from researchers using longitudinal data to explore the broad theme of: The importance of early years, childhood and adolescence. Submissions will be considered for an oral presentation or poster. Analyses involving cross-study comparisons are particularly encouraged.
Important Dates
Deadline for receipt of submissions: 27 July 2015
Notification of acceptance: Early Sept 2015
Registration Opens: Mid Sept 2015
Deadline for final camera-ready copy: 9 OCTOBER
CLOSER CONFERENCE: 30 November 2015
Selected submissions may be considered for publication in a "Conference Edition" of Longitudinal and Life Course Studies.
A prize for best Student Poster, as judged by the Conference Programme Committee, will be awarded during the conference.
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The UK’s longitudinal studies are leading sources of evidence on how our early circumstances and experiences affect our paths through life and our outcomes in adulthood. CLOSER is bringing together researchers from across disciplines to showcase outstanding longitudinal research in the importance of early years, childhood and adolescence. It is an opportunity to share ideas and innovations with longitudinal researchers from across disciplines and sectors, both from the UK and abroad. It will also showcase the latest resources for research, including a new cutting-edge metadata search platform.
About CLOSER
Image: copyright CLOSER, reproduced with permission
Promoting excellence in cohort and longitudinal research
CLOSER (Cohort and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources) aims to maximise the use, value and impact of the UK’s cohort and longitudinal studies. Bringing together nine leading studies, the British Library and the UK Data Service, CLOSER works to stimulate interdisciplinary research, develop shared resources, provide training, and share expertise.
Studies
- Hertfordshire Cohort Study
- 1946 MRC National Survey of Health and Development
- 1958 National Child Development Study
- 1970 British Cohort Study
- Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (Children of the 90s)
- Southampton Women’s Survey
- Millennium Cohort Study (Child of the New Century)
- Life Study (the new birth cohort)
- Understanding Society
CLOSER is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council.
27 February 2015
Propaganda and Ideology in Everyday Life
This week, we announced our new online course Propaganda and Ideology in Everyday Life. This is the first online course of its type that is using the Library's collections, and we are developing and delivering it with the Centre for the Study of Ideologies at the University of Nottingham. The course will start in May, and run on the FutureLearn platform.
During the course, learners will explore and debate issues such as: freedom, community, place, justice and choice. These concepts form the building blocks of our political views but they mean different things to different people. We'll be exploring how those words come to hold different meanings and how political ideas can impact on everyday lives.
B. Prorokov, Freedom American-Style. 1971. (detail of poster).
There are two academic leads on the course. Mathew Humphrey, Professor of Political Theory, works on environmental political theory and theories of ideology. Maiken Umbach, Professor of Modern History, researches the relationship between political ideas and material culture (eg through the built environment or private photography).
The 5-week course draws on themes and items used in our 2013 exhibition, Propaganda Power and Persuasion. One of the most enjoyable aspects of curating that exhibition was giving public tours and talking to people as they visited the exhibition. This is a subject that everybody has an opinion on and experience of, and this new course will provide a new space in which to continue discussions started during that exhibition, and to look at the subject in a new light.
An exciting aspect of this course is that we'll be calling on learners to post images to an online gallery, contributing to the debate on what freedom or protest or community might mean. The online nature of the course means that people can join from all over the world, and there are no previous qualifications or experience required to take part.
Registration is open now. You can fnd out more, and see a video trailer for the course online.
02 February 2015
2014 in review: Management Book of the Year, the problem with democracy, epigenetics and beyond.
2014 saw British Library curators working across diverse themes, including: sport, law, language, gender, ageing and democracy. Through conferences, exhibitions, workshops and collection development, we worked with a range of audiences, uncovering new insights to our collections and learning more about contemporary research. Here are some highlights:
The annual Chartered Management Institute/British Library Management Book of the Year awards ceremony was held in the British Library conference centre on the 3rd February 2014. Details of the category winners can be found on the CMI website along with videos which summarise each of the books. The videos were produced by students from Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. The overall winner for 2014 was The Ten Principals behind Great Customer Experience by Matt Wilkinson. We look forward to participating in the 2015 awards ceremony, which takes place on the 9th of February this year.
As part of the public events series linked to the Beautiful Science: Picturing Data, Inspiring Insight exhibition, we held a public discussion ‘Beyond Nature versus Nurture’. This event brought together social scientists and scientists to discuss how the nature versus nurture debate has been revolutionised by the study of Epigenetics and to debate the moral, ethical and social consequences of the growing understanding of how nurture affects nature. The speakers were Professors George Davey-Smith and Nikolas Rose. The evening was chaired by Professor Jane Elliott. The discussion is available as a podcast and can also be watched on the library’s Youtube channel.
To mark Le Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2014 from Yorkshire, members of the team, with colleagues from across the library, curated and installed a display of collection items at the library’s Boston Spa site near Wetherby. The display included accounts of the early days of cycling as a mass pastime and sport, including an 1897 description of a ‘bicycle gymkhana’, more recent journalistic accounts of the legendary cycling extravaganza, typographical prints responding creatively to the 2011 Tour de France – including Mark Cavendish’s Green Jersey win – and the original manuscript of Tim Moore’s best-selling French Revolutions, his 2001 account of cycling the entire 3,630km route of the 2000 Tour de France.
Gill Ridgley and Robert Davies following the installation of Le Grand Tour exhibition at Boston Spa
In addition to the exhibition there was a ‘peloton’ of blogs written by staff including 'Pedal Power' which explored how patents held by the library shed light on the technical development of the bicycle over the last two hundred years and ‘Escorting Stoller's Depart' which reports on the Tour de British Library when members of staff cycled from St Pancras to Boston Spa to mark the start of the Tour de France.
In April we held a one day conference Portraying Ageing: Cultural Assumptions and Practical Implications in partnership with the The School of Language, Linguistics and Film – Queen Mary, University of London and the Centre for Policy on Ageing. The conference brought together experts from different backgrounds to share and discuss, from a variety of theoretical and practical viewpoints, how age and ageing are not only biological events but also cultural and social constructions and how insights from research can be translated into policy and practice. They keynote address was given by Professor Lynne Segal, Anniversary Professor of Psychology & Gender Studies at Birkbeck, Guardian Columnist and author of ‘Out of Time: The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing’. The conference was filmed and the videos can be accessed via a page on the Social Welfare Portal. An overview of the day is also available via the ‘Age is in the eye of the beholder' blog post.
Professor Lynne Segal delivering the keynote address at the Portraying Ageing Conference.
We were delighted to hold the Fourth Annual Equality lecture in association with the British Sociological Association. This year our speaker was Dr Tom Shakespeare, a senior lecturer in medical sociology at the University of East Anglia and disability rights advocate. Tom’s research interests centre on disability studies and bioethics and his publications include: The Sexual Politics of Disability (1996), Genetic Politics (2002) and Disability Rights and Wrongs (2006). He has worked at the World Health Organization in Geneva where he helped write and edit the World Report on Disability (WHO 2011) and has been involved in the disability movement for 25 years.
The theme of Tom’s talk was ‘Enabling Equality: from disabling barriers to equal participation’ and explored what it takes to achieve equality for disabled people, in the era of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and ‘welfare reform’. The lecture is available on our podcast page and as a video on the British Sociological Association’s vimeo channel.
Members of the team assisted colleagues from across the library in the planning and delivery of the Languages and the First World War International Conference which was held in association with the University of Antwerp and timed to coincide with the opening of the library exhibition Enduring War: Grief, Grit and Humour. The conference aimed to study how the languages of combatant nations influenced each other; the use of trench slang to both include and exclude individuals; censorship and propaganda; the development of interpreting as a profession; personal communication and silence during and after the war and how the First World War still influences how we all speak today. The speakers represented a range of academic disciplines and were drawn from across Europe, North America and Australia. The programme and related blogs can be found on the dedicated conference tumblr page. Some of the twitter feed from the conference is available via Storyfi.
Postcard home: Arthur Tildesley writes to his Mother and Father that he is 'tray bon'.
In June we hosted the inaugural English Grammar Day, which was inspired by renewed political interest in the role of grammar in English teaching and assessment and debates about the cultural and educational significance of knowledge about grammar. EGD 2014 was a sell out event and a forum for reflections on the state of, and attitudes towards, English grammar – in school and beyond – with public contributions encouraged in the form of a lively ‘Any Questions’ style Panel session. The event brought together academic linguists, teachers, PGCE students, teacher trainers and non-specialists and we look forward to hosting EGD 2015 on June 29 and making this an annual event.
The year also saw British Online Archives made available via remote access for British Library readers. This is an online platform which brings together digitised images, and descriptions, of collections held in archives and libraries from across Britain. Collections include the BBC Handbooks and Listener Research, Parliamentary Labour Party records, missionary and colonial papers (recording some of the earliest contacts between Europeans and the populations of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific), and the archive of the Communist Party of Great Britain. More information on some of the material available via the service can be found in an earlier Social Sciences blog post.
Holders of British Library Reader Pass can now access these collections from outside our Reading Rooms, using our Remote e-Resources service at https://eresources.remote.bl.uk:2443/login
Images taken from British Archives Online.
In partnership with the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and the Socio-Legal Studies Association we held the third national socio-legal training day. The theme this year was Law, Gender and Sexuality. The day aimed to draw attention to archives and content which newcomers to the investigation of intersections between law, gender and sexuality may not be aware of and to consider the methodological and practical issues involved in analysing sources. Information about the programme and details of speakers can be found here and overviews of the day can be found here and here.
We also launched our new series of public discussions ‘Enduring Ideas’ in partnership with the Academy of Social Sciences. The series aims to explore some of the key concepts which underpin society. In the first event, Professor Matthew Flinders, University of Sheffield and author of Defending Politics, discussed ‘Enduring Ideas: The Problem with Democracy’.
During the evening Professor Flinders asked and addressed many questions: does the apparent shift from healthy scepticism to corrosive cynicism have more to do with our unrealistic expectations of politics than a failure of democratic politics? Do the problems with democracy – if they exist – tell us more about a failure on the part of the public to understand politics rather than a failure of politicians to understand us? Is the problem with democracy is not that it is in short supply but that we have too much of it? He went on to suggest new ways of thinking about politics to ensure not the death but the life of democracy. A podcast of the talk is available here.
Naturally, this post only provides a snapshot of some of the activities we were involved in, in 2014. We’ve enjoyed working with colleagues from across academia; libraries; archives; third sector organisations; professional bodies such as the Academy of Social Sciences, British Sociological Association and the Sociological Research Association, enormously. It has also been a great way to meet so many members of the public. We’re already looking forward to a new Enduring Ideas discussion, Talk Science, the Annual Equality Lecture and more in 2015. Keep an eye on What’s On for events.
Social Science blog recent posts
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- Archiving Activism: The Animal Guide
- Archiving Activism Website
- Legal Deposit in 12 panels
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