Georgina Brewis is Professor of Social History at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. I am a historian of voluntary action, higher education, youth and students in Britain and the wider world in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the run up to UCL’s bicentennial much of my work is focusing on the history of students and universities. I lead the Generation UCL: 200 Years of Student Life in London project and am also Director of the British Academy Research Project (ARP), ‘Archiving the Mixed Economy of Welfare in Britain’, which raises awareness of the vulnerability of charity archives. Follow me at @ProfGinaB.
Angela Ellis Paine is Lecturer in Voluntary Sector Management at Bayes Business School, City, University of London. Previously at the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham, I have been researching different aspects of voluntary action for over twenty years, with a particular interest in volunteering. I am currently working on a qualitative, longitudinal study of change in the making within the voluntary sector (funded by the ESRC), and am just finishing a study of community engagement in community hospitals (funded by the National Institute of Health Research). Recently completed projects include: building capabilities in the third sector; leadership of the third sector; changing dynamics of volunteering; the impact of volunteering on employability; the role and impact of the Big Lottery Fund in the third sector. Before joining TSRC, I was Director of the Institute for Volunteering Research. I am co-author of Volunteering and Society in the 21st Century (with Colin Rochester and Steven Howlett, published by Palgrave Macmillan) and am currently co-chair of the Voluntary Sector Studies Network and moderator of its discussion group.
Irene Hardill is Professor of Public Policy, Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University. I am a human geographer whose work is policy-related. Over the years my research has explored the changing world of work through the many meanings of work, paid work, unpaid work in the home and in the community. I have explored what moves people to volunteer and the changing roles and responsibilities of voluntary and community sector organisations in the mixed economy of welfare. My research has become increasingly participatory, involving working in close partnership with research users. I have held a number of ESRC grants, and managed projects from other sponsors including the Leverhulme Trust, Age Concern England, the Canadian High Commission, and the French Government. My recent publications include an edited book on lifecourse methods, co-edited with Dr Nancy Worth: Researching the Lifecourse: Critical Reflections from the Social Sciences (Bristol, Policy Press) and in 2011 I co-authored Enterprising Care: Unpaid Voluntary Action in the 21st century with Professor Sue Baines (Policy Press).
Rose Lindsey is a Senior Research Fellow in the department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Southampton, and for the last 5 years have led several projects that have drawn on Mass Observation Project (MOP) material produced between 1981 and 2010. In 2012, I commissioned a directive on The Big Society (TSRC working paper 95). In 2013, I led an ESRC funded mixed-methods longitudinal project that followed 38 writers through time to examine their views, attitudes and experience of voluntary action. A co-authored book on Thirty Years of Voluntary Action, published by Policy Press, is due out in 2018. The project also provided methodological insights on how to use the MOP longitudinally, and in mixed-methods research, through a workshop held at the Mass Observation Archive (MOA); and through a co-authored book chapter on ‘Time in mixed methods longitudinal research’ (Researching the Lifecourse, eds Hardill and Worth, 2015). In my most recent ESRC funded project I worked in partnership with the MOA to challenge arguments about the representativeness of the 1981+ panel of MOP writers. Asking the question ‘Who are the 1981+ Mass Observation writers?’ the project set out to make MOP writers a more knowable sample. It drew on MOP metadata to put together an online, searchable and downloadable database. This will enable users to confidently sample MOP writers, and will enable longitudinal use of the archive. On this project I lead on analysis of the ‘public discourses’, using Mass Observation material for the 1940s and 2010s.
Rob Macmillan is a Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University. Prior to joining CRESR I was at the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) at the University of Birmingham. From an inter-disciplinary background in social policy, politics, political economy and sociology, my main research interests are around the long term qualitative dynamics and contested politics of voluntary action, theoretical understandings of voluntary action, in particular the development and application of field theory in the third sector, the awkward relationships between markets, the state and the third sector, and a longstanding interest in the changing field of capacity building and third sector support infrastructure. I have been researching different aspects of the third sector, voluntary and community action and community development for about 20 years, in collaboration with other academics and researchers, policy makers and funders, and with key third sector organisations. I am co-editor of the international journal Voluntary Sector Review, and currently co-Chair of the UK Voluntary Sector Studies Network.
Discourses of Voluntary Action 