Voluntary Action in Changing Times: Creating History or Repeating It?
13-15 July 2022
University of Liverpool
Programme overview
Tuesday, 12 July 2022
Time
Activity
Venue
19.00
Pre-conference dinner for early arrivals. Booking required; e-mail Pat Starkey patst@liverpool.ac.uk Please note that this is not included in the conference fee
The Pen Factory
Wednesday, 13 July 2022
Time
Activity
Venue
8.00-9.00
Breakfast for early arrivals
Vine Court
10.30-12.00
Registration and check-in Tea & coffee
Social Space, First Floor, Hub502
12.00-13.00
Plenary : Animal, Vegetable or Mineral: Can the Voluntary Sector Survive Hybridity? Colin Rochester, University of Kent
Conference dinner Jazz jollification: Home Brew (Colin Rochester’s band)
Victoria Gallery and Museum
Friday, 15 July 2022
Time
Activity
Venue
8.00-9.00
Breakfast
Vine Court
9.30-11.00
Parallel Paper Session E
Hub502, Rooms Flex 1 & 2, Teaching Rooms 4 & 5
11.00-11.30
Tea & coffee
Social Space, First Floor
11.30-12.00
Voluntary Action History Society AGM
Flex 2
12.00-13.00
Plenary Session: Voluntary Action in Changing Times: Creating History or Repeating It? What have we learned?
Flex 2
13.00
Sandwich lunch
Social Space, First Floor
Parallel Paper Sessions
Session A, Wednesday, 13 July 14.00-15.30
A1Flex 2
Panel: Gender, generation and sociability at the grass roots, 1880-1914Chair: Mary Clare Martin
Mandy Barrie, The Women’s Co-operative Guild, 1883-1914: A study in local empowerment
Ruth Davidson, The local context: Suffrage and after, East Surrey, 1890s-1939
Mary Clare Martin, Gender, life course and sociability: Female activism at local, national and ecclesiastical level, 1880-1959
Claire Eustance, Branch culture and intergenerational relationships in the Women’s Freedom League in the interwar period
A2Teaching Room 4
The impact of public opinion on voluntary actionChair: Kerrie Holloway
Anna Bocking-Welch, Donor demands and political controversies: Oxfam, Barclays and South Africa, 1970-90
Anna Maguire, Refugee resettlement, multi-culture and anti-racism in 1980s Britain
Peter Grant, Losing Trust? The National Trust, slavery and erasing history
A3Flex 1
The problem of the ‘poor’: two key thinkersChair: TBA
Sheila Blackburn and Diane Frost, The persistence of poverty: Charles Booth as a Victorian social explorer among the London and Liverpool urban poor
Helen Clare Cromarty, William Penny Brookes and the Wenlock Olympian Games
A4Teaching Room 5
Blurred lines: Young people, voluntary action and the frontiers of the stateChair: TBA
Robert Snape, Voluntary youth work and the new philanthropy in inter-war Britain: The road to National Youth Service
Michael Lambert, The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the era of the Curtis Crusade: Child welfare and the frontiers of the state, 1948-70
Session B, Wednesday, 13 July, 15.45-17.15
B1Flex 2
Panel: Charity archives: Recent interventions and initiatives in a neglected archives sectorChair: Georgina Brewis
Paul Beard, Charity and voluntary sector archives at risk: Conceptualising and contextualising a neglected archives sector
Helena Smart, Charity archives in the collections of the Liverpool Central Library and Archives
Kathryn Preston, Charity Archives Development Plan
B2Teaching Room 4
What do women want? The battle for equality in social policyChair: TBA
Alice McKimm, The women’s shelter movements in Scotland and England since 1971
Ruth Davidson, Whose family? Women’s rights and family policy in 1980s Britain
Michele Santoro, Women’s participation and social demands in the Italian 1960s: The case study of the CNDI (National Council of Italian Women) ZOOM
B3Flex 1
Organising for ourselves: The role of volunteers and voluntary organisations in communities of interest and placeChair: TBA
Helen Monro, For self and community: The influence of voluntary associations in Victoria’s country towns, 1851-1901
Pat Starkey, The Liverpool Civic Service League
Christine Woyshner, The educational activities of African American voluntary organisations: The Black Elks, 1898-1954 ZOOM
B4Teaching Room 5
Business in the community: Commercialism and voluntarismChair:
George Gosling, Localism, commercialism and the British charity shop, 1940s-1970s
Gillian Murray, The ‘co-operative imagination’: Scotland’s community business movement and the moral economies of deindustrialisation in the 1980s and 1990s
Session C, Thursday, 14 July, 9:30-11.00
C1Flex 2
Panel: Border crossings: Charity and voluntarism in Britain’s mixed economy of health care since 1948Chair: George Gosling
Steph Haywood, ‘The Victoria Hospital is dead, long live the Victoria Hospital’: The legacy of the first voluntary hospital established in the UK after 1948
Rosemary Cresswell, ‘Cinderella’ services, charity and the early NHS
Agnes Arnold-Forster, Mrs Iris Brook and the management of Guy’s Hospital’s charitable funds, 1948-1974
C2Teaching Room 4
Varieties of faith-based voluntary actionChair: TBA
Zhenzhen Zhou, Sympathy education and the NSPCC’s League of Pity, 1893-1913
Amy Grant, ‘A strange sanctuary’: State, hate, and God in late twentieth century Britain
Caroline Adams and Janette Young, Anglican women volunteers in Adelaide, post-World War I to the 21st century: From baking cakes to implementing ‘tap and go’ readers ZOOM
C3Flex 1
Power to the people: Mobilising voluntary action for rightsChair: TBA
Boaz Berger, A double-edge sword? Mobilising voluntary action and British Parliamentary responsibility in the 1780s
Anna Bocking Welch, Richard Huzzey, Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Henry Miller, Petitioning and people power in twentieth century Britain: Pressure politics, public engagement and the multi-use petition
Michael Locke and Jurgen Grotz, The Volunteer Rights Inquiry – historical context and current questions
C4Teaching Room 5
What’s ‘wrong’ with the kids? Young people as a social problem groupChair: TBA
Elizabeth Kirkland, From metropole to Montreal: Exploring the risky migration experience of young domestic workers at the change of the twentieth century
Charlotte Clements: 130 years of Merseyside Youth Association: Co-production in histories of voluntary action ZOOM
Marta Starostina, AIESEC: Its economic, political and social challenges [AIESEC is international youth-run, non-governmental and not-for-profit organization that provides young people with leadership development, cross-cultural internships, and global volunteer exchange experiences]
Session D, Thursday, 14 July, 11:30 – 13.00
D1Flex 2
Developing new ways of raising fundsChair: TBA
John McLoughlin, Massachusetts and London in the 1640s: A case study in telling the history of fundraising and philanthropy
Marty Sulek, The last romantic war: The genesis of modern wartime humanitarian relief in the Crimean War of 1853-56
Carlo De Nuzzo, The ‘Famine de coton’ and subscriptions in the Journal de Rouen, 1861-63
D2Teaching Room 4
Doing ‘with’ or doing ‘for’: Local voluntary actionChair: TBA
Ellie Munro, Historicising voluntary action in Birmingham, 1965-2010
Suzanne Martikke, Is volunteering ‘doing with’ or ‘doing for’? Volunteering and social capital at a community-run library and a foodbank
D3Flex 1
Do we ever learn? The relationship of the past to the presentChair: TBA
Wendy Wiertz, Creating and repeating history: Lace aid programmes in the First World War
Kerrie Holloway, ‘Conditions of an ant-heap’: Parallels between the Spanish refugees of 1939 and the contemporary Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh
Mike Locke, Volunteering in disasters: a review ZOOM
D4Teaching Room 5
What do women do? Varieties of engagementChair: TBA
Jayne Lacny, Female philanthropic voluntary action: The battle for the hearts, minds and souls of Victorian sailors and their families
Philip Milnes-Smith, Once forgotten, never seen? Mary Wardell & the Convalescent Home for Scarlet Fever in Stanmore
Ana Kladnik, Women Firefighters at the Firefighting Olympics
Session E, 15 July, 9.30-11.00
E1Flex 2
Panel 4: Volunteering in community businesses: Review of recent research by Power to ChangeChair: Richard Harries
Richard Harries, Volunteering in community business: A digest of recent work
Angela Ellis Paine, Volunteering in community business: Meaning, practice and management
Annabel Litchfield, Mylene Pacot and Sarah Thelwall, Valuing the contribution of volunteers to community businesses supported by the Community Business Fund
Rachael Archer, The role of volunteers in community businesses ZOOM
E2Teaching Room 4
An infinite variety of voluntary action: People step upChair: TBA
Robert Piggott, A League of their own: Hospital Friends and the NHS
Henry Irving, Rubbish dumps, recycling bins and the frontier between state and voluntary action in Second World War Britain
Eleanor O’Keefe, The 32,000 different hands of history – a micro analysis of volunteering in Blood Swept Lands & Seas of Red ZOOM
E3Flex 1
Useful knowledge: New thinking about voluntary action historyChair: TBA
Jurgen Grotz & Colin Rochester, The establishment of a research institution dedicated to volunteering in England: The Institute for Volunteering Research and its context, 1998-2018
Meta Zimmeck, ‘Proper’ voluntary action? ‘Proper’ history? Difficulties in writing a history of voluntary action and the provision of PPE during the pandemic
Rhodri Davies, Using charity history in practice
Contact us:
For information about the conference programme e-mail Meta Zimmeck:
