Peter Grant is the Chair of VAHS. He is a Lecturer in Voluntary Sector Management at Cass Business School, City University. Peter’s interests are particularly around voluntary action in time of war with a particular focus on the First World War.
Georgina Brewis is the Publicity Secretary of VAHS. She is currently a post-doctoral research officer on a Leverhulme-funded project, Social Change and English, 1945-1965, at the Institute of Education, University of London. She specialises in the contemporary and historical study of volunteering, youth and education and is currently a member of a group planning ‘Education, War and Peace’, a major international conference to be held in London 2014. She completed her PhD ‘An imperial ideal of service: Britian and India before 1914′ in 2009.
Marian Flint is the Seminar Convenor. She is a part-time research student at Birkbeck, University of London. Her thesis focuses on the position of male, middle-class bankrupts in Victorian England. She has previously carried out research into the relief of middle-class poverty by benevolent funds in the same period.
George Campbell Gosling is Editor of the VAHS blog and Chair of VAHS New Researchers. He recently passed his PhD at Oxford Brookes University on ‘Charity and Change in the Mixed Economy of Healthcare in Bristol, 1918-1948′. He has published numerous articles on the history of medicine and charity in modern Britain and co-edited a volume on Understanding the Roots of Voluntary Action.
Jenny Harrow is Professor of Voluntary Sector Management at Cass Business School, City University, and Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Giving and Philanthropy.
Sarah Lloyd is Reader in British History at the University of Hertfordshire. She works on histories of charity and poor relief in Britain during the 18th century. Her book Charity and Poverty in England, 1680-1820: Wild and visionary schemes was published by Manchester University Press in 2009.
Carmen Mangion teaches on a number of history MA courses at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of nineteenth-century Britain, concentrating on the intersections of gender, religion and medical care. Her current research looks at nineteenth-century Catholicism and health care in Britain, examining the geography of both domiciliary and institutional medical care and questioning the significance of religion, gender, ethnicity and anti-Catholicism to the development of health care practices.
Alison Penn is the Secretary of VAHS. She works for the Open University South East Region as a Staff Tutor in the Faculty of Health and Social Care. She combines this with independent research and training in health, social care and the voluntary sector and works with the University of Brighton, the King’s Fund and the Charities Evaluation Services. Alison received her PhD in Social History from the University of Sussex in 1992 with a thesis on national / local relations in the voluntary sector in the post-war period.
Colin Rochester was the founding Chair of the Voluntary Action History Society. He has worked in and with the voluntary sector for over forty years and is currently an Honorary Research Fellow in Social Policy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has researched and published widely on the voluntary and community sector past and present, including co-editing the 2011 volume on Understanding the Roots of Voluntary Action. With Bill Rushbrooke and Meta Zimmeck he recently founded the consultancy firm Practical Wisdom R2Z.
Bill Rushbrooke is a retired Principal Lecturer at Roehampton University and a semi-professional jazz dancer.With Colin Rochester and Meta Zimmeck he recently founded the consultancy firm Practical Wisdom R2Z.
Brenda Weeden is the VAHS Membership Secretary. Her career as an archivist was spent mainly in university archives, and she has published on history of education topics. Her voluntary activities in retirement include active participation in the management of a small housing society and she is currently Chair of the VAHS-led Campaign for Voluntary Sector Archives.
Meta Zimmeck is the Treasurer of VAHS. She is Research Manager for Carol Goldstone Associates. Her main research interest is the intersection between government policy and voluntary action, especially in the areas of volunteering, funding of voluntary and community organisations and the Compact. She co-edited the 2011 volume on Understanding the Roots of Voluntary Action and with Colin Rochester and Bill Rushbrooke she recently founded the consultancy firm Practical Wisdom R2Z.
