Dr Kate Bradley is Lecturer in Social History and Social Policy at the University of Kent. Her book Poverty, Philanthropy and the State: Charities and the Working Classes in London, 1918-1979 was published in 2009 by Manchester University Press. She is a former VAHS committee member. Her VAHS seminar, now available as a free podcast, and her contribution to this blog looked at youth work in the 1960s through the Hoxton Cafe Project.
Dr Georgina Brewis is a research officer at the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research and a research associate at the Institute of Volunteering Research. She completed her PhD on ‘An imperial ideal of service: Britian and India before 1914′ at the University of East London in 2009. She is also a VAHS committee member. Her contributions have been on the impact of public spending cuts on voluntary sector archives; voluntary action history sites and museums in London; the campaign to protect charity archives with Brenda Weeden; and on student volunteering a century ago.
Dr Eve Colpus recently completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford on the topic of ‘Landscapes of welfare: concepts and cultures of British women’s philanthropy, c.1918-1939′. She is currently a research assisant on the ‘Religious fath, space and diasporic communities in East London: 1800-the present‘ project. She is also beginning work on aspects of the history of Barnett House, the centre for social and economic studies and social work training in Oxford, especially its role in the history of the university settlement movement and social work. Her contribution to this blog was on women in philanthropy, past and present.
Professor Hugh Cunningham is Emeritus Professor of Social History at the University of Kent. He is a widely influential historian of childhood and has recently turned his attention to the history of philanthropy. A podcast is now available of his plenary lecture at the 2010 VAHS Conference, From Benevolence to Philanthropy, 1700-1900. His contribution to this blog considered the long history of the new philanthropy.
Dr Leo Enticknap is Lecturer in Cinema and Director of the Institute for Communication Studies at the University of Leeds. His research interests include the cultural and economic history of moving image, sponsored film-making and the ethics of archival film preservation. His contribution for this blog was on the archival issues and controversy surrounding Ken Loach’s 1969 Save The Children documentary.
Anjelica Finnegan is a second year PhD student at the University of Southampton in the department of Politics and International Relations. Her PhD will investigate the changes in UK government attitude towards and policy for supporting/encouraging volunteering from the 1960s to 2010. Although primarily a social scientist, Anjelica’s interest in the history of voluntary action grew whilst working with to preserve Volunteering England’s Archive, now housed at the LSE, with Dr Georgina Brewis. Her contribution to this blog was a book review of the influence of William Beveridge and the history of the British voluntary sector.
Sarah Flew is working towards her doctoral thesis on the topic of ‘Philanthropy and Secularisation: The Funding of Anglican Voluntary Religious Organisations in London, 1860 -1914′ at the Open University. Her PhD is part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Building on History: The Church in London‘. Find out more about Sarah at academia.edu. Her VAHS seminar, now available as a free podcast, and her contribution to the blog was on the use of financial records in researching the history of philanthropy.
Dr George Campbell Gosling recently completed his PhD at Oxford Brookes University on the topic of ‘Charity and Change in the Mixed Economy of Healthcare in Bristol, 1918-1948′. He is also a VAHS committee member and co-edited a volume on the British history of the voluntary sector with Sussex Academic Press. You can find out more about his work on academia.edu. He is the blog editor and his contributions have been on historians and the ‘big society’; a conference on healthcare and voluntarism in Britain and Ireland; the historical relationship between charity and commerce; and, with Dr Melanie Oppenheimer, making the case for a transnational approach to the history of voluntary action.
Dr Robert Howes was a member of the Westminster group of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, 1978-80 and has been a member of the local Gay West group since 1985. A librarian by profession, he is currently a Research Associate at King’s College London. He has published a book and articles on Portuguese history and on LGBT culture in Brazil. His contribution to this blog was on voluntary action and the LGBT movement since the 1960s.
Dr Kirsten Jarrett is an independent researcher. She is primarily an archaeologist, but also researching social identity in early 20th century domestic contexts and the role of material culture during the late 20th century in post-trauma identity reconstruction. Her contribution for this blog was a review of Ada Chesterton’s 1926 classic text In Darkest London.
Dr Henk Looijesteijn is a researcher at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, where he works on the Charity in the Golden Age project. At the 2010 VAHS Conference, he was runner up for the New Researchers prize for his paper on the history of Dutch almshouses. His contribution to this blog reported back from an international conference on the history of almshouses.
Gareth Millward is working towards his PhD under the supervision of Dr Martin Gorsky at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His thesis is on the topic of ‘Disability in the Welfare State: Defining, Defending and Dividing Disability post 1970′. He is a member of VAHS New Researchers. His contribution was on the difficulties of researching in small and uncatalogued voluntary sector archives.
Dr Chris Nottingham is Emeritus Reader in Contemporary History at Glasgow Caledonian University. Part of his work on the history of the ‘insecure professions’ is a continuing collaboration on child protection with Dr Chris Robinson, who has worked with the RSSPCC/Children 1st and as an inspector of child care services for the Scottish Government. His contribution to this blog looked at changing perceptions of child protection officers in Scotland.
Dr Glen O’Hara is Reader in the History of Public Policy at Oxford Brookes University. His next book, Governing Post-War Britain: The Paradoxes of Progress, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan early next year. You can read his blog or follow him on twitter. His contribution to this blog considered the ‘big society’ in historical perspective.
Dr Melanie Oppenheimer is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at the University of New England, Australia. She has researched volunteering during the Second World War in Australia, Britain and Canada and is currently working on a history of the Australian Red Cross. Her contribution for this blog, with Dr George Campbell Gosling, made the case for a transnational approach to the history of voluntary action.
Dr Andrea Pass recently completed her D.Phil at Magdalen College, University of Oxford on ‘British women missionaries in India, c.1917-1950′, focusing on the high-Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the evangelical Church Missionary Society. It examines the background and training of the women in Britain as well as their experiences and the services proided by these societies in India. Her contribution to this blog considered the importance of Christmas for missionaries in India.
Colin Rochester was the founding Chair and currently a committee member 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, and recently co-founded the consultancy firm Practical Wisdom R2Z. His contributions, with Meta Zimmeck, was on New Labour’s ‘compact’ with the voluntary sector and a review of the year 2011.
Dr Graham Smith has been an active oral historian since 1981. He has also been an active trade unionist for about as long and is currently chair of his local union branch. He is Senior Lecturer in Social Science at Royal Holloway, University of London and Chair of the Oral History Society. He has published widely on oral history and public history. His contribution to this blog was on oral history and the occupy protest movements.
Janine Stanford is Project Archivist for the Children’s Society’s ‘Including the Excluded’ project. The Children’s Society was founded in 1881, its first home for disabled children in 1888 and its innovative fundraising initiative Children’s Union in 1889. The project is cataloguing records including nearly 3,000 case files. Her contribution was on the ‘Including the Excluded’ project.
Dr Pat Starkey is now Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool and is a former Chair of the VAHS. She has published widely on the history of social work, child welfare and the voluntary sector. Her contribution to this blog was on the ‘problem family’, past and present.
Kathleen Vongsathorn is completing her doctorate at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis, ”Things that Matter’: Catholic and Protestant Approaches to Leprosy Settlement in Uganda, 1927-1951′, explores the ways British missionaries and Ugandan patients shaped new communities within leprosy Her broader research is on the relationship between leprosy and charity in the British empire. Her contribution to this blog was an account of the social, religious, and charitable importance of Christmas celebrations at a mission leprosy settlement in Uganda.
Tosh Warwick is working towards his PhD at the University of Huddersfield under the supervision of Professor Barry Doyle and Dr Rebecca Gill. His thesis is on the topic of ‘Middlesbrough’s Steel Magnates: Culture, Politics and Participation 1880-1934′. Find out more about Tosh at academia.edu. His contribution was on how business archives can he used in researching the history of voluntary action.
Brenda Weeden is a History graduate of St Hugh’s College, Oxford and archivist at the University of Westminster, her research into the early of which was published in 2008 as The Education of the Eye: The History of the Royal Polytechnic Institution, 1838-1881. She is a VAHS committee member and her contribution to this blog, with Dr Georgina Brewis, was on the campaign to protect charity archives.
Meta Zimmeck is a visiting fellow at the University of Roehampton’s Centre for the Study of Voluntary and Community Activity and co-founder of the consultancy firm Practical Wisdom R2Z. She is also a VAHS committee member. Her contributions, with Colin Rochester, was on New Labour’s ‘compact’ with the voluntary sector and a review of the year 2011.
