26 December 2011 The second part of our blog’s festive double bill is now available to read and comment on. Dr Andrea Pass examines what Christmas was like for missionary women in Carols and Curry? Christmas in the Indian Mission Field. You can also read Kathleen Vongsathorn’s discussion of the importance of Christmas celebrations at a mission leprosy settlement in Uganda.
22 December 2011 Episode 2 of Hugh Cunningham’s BBC Radio 4 series on the history of philanthropy is available to listen to on the iplayer. You can hear Victorian Philanthropy and Its Crtitics and you can read and comment his blog piece for us: How New is the New Philanthropy?
19 December 2011 In the first of our blog’s Christmas in the Missions double-bill, Kathleen Vongsathorn considers the social, religious, and charitable importance of Christmas celebrations at a mission leprosy settlement in Uganda.
15 December 2011 A conference will be held at Bangor University in September 2012 on ‘Community, Cohesion and Social Stability: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives’. The call for papers is out now. For more details see the event page on this website.
13 December 2011 Professor Hugh Cunningham’s BBC Radio 4 series ‘How New is the New Philanthropy?’ began last night and is available to listen to via the BBC iplayer. You can listen now and let us know your thoughts by commenting on his blog piece for us last week.
12 December 2011 Dr Eve Colpus writes for our blog this week on women in philanthropy, past and present. Also, a three-part series by last week’s blog contributor, Professor Hugh Cunningham, will begin on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm tonight, in which he asks ‘How New is the New Philanthropy?’ Read more in his blog piece and don’t forget to tune in or catch it later on the iplayer.
8 December 2011 Call for Papers – The first New Researchers’ workshop of 2012 will be on the theme ‘Gendering the history of charity and voluntary effort’ at the University of Huddersfield, Friday 9 March 2012. It is organised by Tosh Warwick (University of Huddersfield) and Eve Colpus (University of Oxford). Please visit the workshop page for more information and a call for papers.
5 December 2011 For our blog this week Professor Hugh Cunningham asks ‘How New is the New Philanthropy?’ His radio 4 series on this topic begins next week and will be on for the next three Mondays at 8pm. Make sure to tune in!
1 December 2011 Two new VAHS podcasts are now available. Our lastest IHR seminar podcast is Dr Chris Nottingham’s seminar paper on From ‘Cruelty Men’ to ‘Rottweilers’: The Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Child Protection, 1960-2000. Also available is a podcast of Dr Georgina Brewis and Anjelica Finnegan making The Case for Charity Archives at a recent event. Links to these podcasts and more are available via this website’s podcast page.
28 November 2011 Writing for our blog this week are two VAHS committee members, Dr Georgina Brewis and Brenda Weeden. You can read and comment on their discussion of the VAHS’s campaign to protect charity archives now.
21 November 2011 This week the VAHS blog features its first book review. Anjelica Finnegan gives her verdict on two edited volumes born of VAHS conferences: Beveridge and Voluntary Action in Britain and the Wider British World edited by Nicholas Deakin and Melanie Oppenheimer and Understanding the Roots of Voluntary Action: Historical Perspectives on Current Social Policy edited by Colin Rochester, George Campbell Gosling, Alison Penn and Meta Zimmeck. You can read and comment on Anjelica’s Review: Beveridge and the Roots of Voluntary Action now.
14 November 2011 For our blog this week, Dr George Campbell Gosling discusses the relationship between the voluntary and private sectors and suggests historians should pay more attention to this ‘other moving frontier’. You can read and comment on Charity and Commerce now.
10 November 2011 Five days left if you would like to give a paper as part of the 2012 International Conference on Urban History’s session on ‘The Culture of Associations: Transnational Perspectives, 1600-2010′. You can see the call for papers here. Proposals should be sent to Professor Dr Norbert Götz of the Södertörn University by Tuesday 15 November 2011.
7 November 2011 Dr Henk Looijesteijn has contributed to our weekly blog, reporting back from an international conference on the history of almshouses he convened in the Netherlands earlier this year. Read and comment on Almshouses in Europe here.
4 November 2011 Dr Kate Bradley’s recent VAHS seminar is now available to listen to online as a free podcast via the IHR’s History Spot website. You can also read her blog piece on the same topic of ‘The Hoxton Cafe Project: Following the fault lines of community, welfare and perception’.
31 October 2011 This week our blog post is written by Dr Chris Nottingham and examines the changing perceptions of child protection officers in Scotland. Read and comment on From ‘Cruelty Men’ to ‘Rottweilers’ here.
24 October 2011 New week, new blog post! Dr Glen O’Hara offers his thoughts on the Coalition government’s approach to charity and civic participation. Read and comment on The ‘Big Society’ and the Challenges of History here.
We have now announced our seminar programme for the 2012 spring and summer terms. We have speakers lined up to address topics as diverse as disability campaign groups, preschools for Aboriginal children and medieval alms for the poor. You can find our full 2011/2012 seminar programme here.
17 October 2011 Transnational Histories of Voluntary Action Network launched. The history of voluntary action is a particularly rich field for transnational and comparative history. The VAHS is looking to set up an international network on this theme. We would like to find historians interested in this topic to cooperate with us on workshops, conferences and a networking bid. Read more.
Ahead of her seminar for us next week, Dr Kate Bradley of the University of Kent writes for our blog. Both the blog piece and the seminar paper are on the topic of 1960s youth work. Read and comment on ‘The Hoxton Cafe Project: Following the fault lines of community, welfare and perception’ here.
The audio-podcast of our last seminar is now up on the IHR History SPOT website. Listen now to Sarah Flew’s ‘Two Tier Philanthropy’ on the Bishop of London’s Fund, 1863-1914. Or find out about all our podcasts here.
10 October 2011 Our autumn seminar series starts today at the IHR in London. Our first seminar is from Open University research student Sarah Flew on the topic of ‘Two Tier Philanthropy: the Philanthropists who funded the Bishop of London’s Fund and the work that the Fund financed, 1863 to 1914′. Find out more about Sarah’s research and this topic by reading her contribution to our blog, ‘Money, Money, Money’ here.
Our weekly blog posting features a discussion of small archives in the voluntary sector and recommends researchers making use of the DANGO online database. Read and comment on Gareth Millward‘s ‘What is an archive?’ here.
4 October 2011 Two new podcasts are now available of the keynote papers from the VAHS Fourth Research Conference. Emeritus Professor Hugh Cunningham (University of Kent) talks on ‘From benevolence to philanthropy, 1700-1900’ and Professor Clare Midgley (Sheffield Hallam University) gives an address entitled ‘A transoceanic web of reformers in the age of empire’. Listen here.
3 October 2011 Next week the autumn programme of our seminar series begins at the IHR in London. Sarah Flew will be kicking off with her paper on the funding of Victorian and Edwardian philanthropy. Ahead of this she has written about this topic for our blog. Read ‘Money, Money, Money’ and comment here.
26 September 2011 Dr Georgina Brewis reports back from her tour of historic sites in London for Open House 2011 in our blog. Read it and comment here.
19 September 2011 Janine Stanford of The Children’s Society writes about their exciting new archiving project, ‘Including the Excluded’, in the latest contribution to our blog. Read and comment on it here.
A report of our New Researchers workshop in Cambridge on ‘Charity and the City: Medieval to Modern’ was published in Wellcome History, issue 46 (pages 18-19). Read it here.
12 September 2011 New blog post: Colin Rochester and Meta Zimmeck argue that New Labour’s ‘compact’ with the voluntary sector has failed and examine why. Read and comment on ‘The Compact: We’ve lost it!’ here.
5 September 2011 New blog post on ‘Voluntarism, healthcare and the state in twentieth-century Britian and Ireland’ by George Campbell Gosling. Read and comment on this post here.
26 August 2011 The edited collection of papers from our 2008 conference, Understanding the Roots of Voluntary Action, has been reviewed by Fiona Poland of the University of East Anglia in the ARVAC bulletin. Read the review here. For more information on the book see Sussex Academic Press.
23 August 2011 New blog post on Business archives and voluntary action. Read and comment on the post by Tosh Warwick from the University of Huddersfield here.
8 August 2011 Exclusive 20% discount from Oxford University Press/British Academy. VAHS is delighted to welcome a new book on voluntary action history The Ages of Voluntarism: How we got to the Big Society edited by Matthew Hilton and James McKay. This book provides the historical background to the rise of the Big Society. Voluntarism has evolved over the last hundred years to adapt to changing circumstances, drawing up new agendas, tackling old problems, and acting as an alternative to state provision and as a catalyst for further government action.
The publishers are pleased to offer VAHS supporters a discount. Visit the OUP website to get a copy for £11.99 (was £14.99). Add the book to the shopping basket and enter the code AAFLY5 in the promotional code box. For further information on this offer, please contact
8 July 2011 New blog post. Read and comment on our post by Georgina Brewis here: ‘Voluntary sector archives: A hidden casuality of the cuts?’
27 June 2011 VAHS launches a new blog today. Read and comment on our first post by George Campbell Gosling here: ‘What is the big society and why should historians care?
21 June 2011 VAHS is now on twitter! Follow our tweets here.
5 June 2011 The British Records Association is running a training day on ‘Big Societies and Big Challenges: Charity archives in a changing world’ on 11 July 2011. VAHS Publicity Secretary Georgina Brewis will be speaking. Find out more here. Download the programme and booking form here.
31 May 2011 The Voluntary Action History Seminar and our podcasts are profiled in the latest edition of the IHR’s magazine Past and Future. Follow this link to read the article on page 14 by outgoing Seminar Convenor George Campbell Gosling.
20 April 2011 On monday we celebrated 20 years of the Voluntary Action History Society at a well-attended event at the London School of Economics. Bernard Harris and Melanie Oppenheimer gave presentations, Nicholas Deakin launched two new books and Justin Davis Smith recalled the early days of VAHS. You can view the photo album online here.
31 March 2011 New books on voluntary action history published! We are delighted that Understanding the Roots of Voluntary Action: Historical Perspectives on Current Social Policy edited by VAHS committee members Colin Rochester, George Campell Gosling, Alison Penn & Meta Zimmeck has now been published by Sussex Academic Press. You can order a copy here
A half price discount flyer for Beveridge and Voluntary Action in Britain and the Wider British World is available until the end of April 2011. The book contains new articles by writers including Nicholas Deakin, Jose Harris, Frank Prochaska and Pat Thane. Download a flyer here here
23 January 2011 We are delighted that Beveridge and Voluntary Action in Britain and the Wider British World edited by Melanie Oppenheimer and Nicholas Deakin has now been published by Manchester University Press. We will be launching this book at an event in partnership with the Department of Social Policy at the LSE on 18 April 2011. More information about the book launch
