VAHS New Researchers is a sub-committee of the Voluntary Action History Society. It exists to provide networking opportunities and support for postgraduate and early career researchers working on the history of charity, campaigning and civil society.
The group was founded to capitalise on the impressive postgraduate and early career presence at the VAHS’s 2008 international research conference at the University of Liverpool. The new committee for 2012 was announced in an open letter from the new chair. For more details see our past and present members page.
For more information on the activities of VAHS New Researchers or getting involved, please contact Dr George Campbell Gosling at
Workshops
The first New Researcher event was a one-day workshop on ‘Medicine and Charity in History’ held at Oxford Brookes University in February 2009, intended to offer postgraduate and early career researchers an opportunity to raise problems and issues in their work with each other and some leading scholars from the field through papers and a roundtable discussion.
Thanks to funding from the Economic History Society, we have now held eight workshops for postgraduate and early career researchers on this model. Each workshop has focused on a different are of the history of voluntary action, ranging from urban and domestic history, to youth and and campaig groups, to public health and the British Empire. You can find further details on our past events page.
The ninth VAHS New Researchers workshop will be held at the University of Huddersfield on Friday 9 March 2012 on the theme of ‘Gendering the History of Charity and Voluntary Effort’. The deadline for the call for papers is 3 February 2012 and abstracts should be sent to 
Other activities
VAHS New Researchers also encourages postgraduates and early career researchers to participate in all areas of the Voluntary Action History Society’s activities. This includes the regular seminar series at the Institute of Historical Research in London. You can find details and podcasts of New Researcher seminars on our past events page.
In the summer of 2011, we launched the VAHS blog. This became quickly established as a space for sharing and discussing the latest research, developments and insights in the history of charity, campaigning and civil society. If you would like to know more, see our about the blog page. Alternatively, browse the blog contributions by new researchers.
The VAHS encourages new researchers to give papers at its conferences by awarding a New Researchers Prize. These prizes have been judged by Professor Nicholas Deakin and Professor Jenny Harrow.
At our 2008 conference, the winner was Bridget Yates of the University of Gloucestershire. Her paper was developed into the chapter ‘By the People Themselves? Social Class and a Volunteer-Led Museum, 1884-1915′ in Colin Rochester, George Campbell Gosling, Alison Penn and Meta Zimmeck (eds.), Understanding the Roots of Voluntary Action: Historical Perspectives on Current Social Policy (Sussex Academic Press, 2011), pp. 67-81.
At our 2010 conference the prize was sponsored by the University of Kent’s Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy. The winner was was Eve Colpus of New College, Oxford University for her paper ‘New philanthropy, older women: Re-examining the “new philanthropy” debate in interwar Britain’. There were two runners up: Oliver Blaiklock and Henk Looijesteijn. You can read Henk’s paper ‘Charity seems to be very National among them’. Motives for Founding of Almshouses in the Netherlands c.1350-c.1800 online.
