In current debates about the 'knowledge society' and the organization of 'research', the spotlight is most often on the universities. This interdisciplinary and transhistorical volume focuses on the less often-recognized work of independent researchers creating and participating in knowledge outside the academy, from seventeenth-century north-country astronomers to Victorian naturalists to today's think tanks, community historians and new forms of researching and publishing through the internet. These intriguing cases raise challenging issues about the location, definition, and validation of 'research', about active participation in knowledge-generation, and about the perhaps changing boundaries of university today.
About the Author: DAVID E. ALLEN is an Honorary Research Associate of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, and of the Natural History Museum, UK BEN ANDERSON is Deputy Director of Chimera, the Institute for Socio-Technical Research and Innovation at the University of Essex, UK RONALD BARNETT is Professor of Higher Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK MARK BRADY is studying for his PhD, looking at blogging as a social innovation, at Chimera, the Institute for Socio-Technical Research and Innovation at the University of Essex, UK ALLAN CHAPMAN is a Historian of Science at the Faculty of Modern History and Wadham College, Oxford University, UK DOLAN CUMMINGS is Research and Editorial Director at the Institute of Ideas (IoI) in London, UK WILLIAM DAVIES is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, UK, where he leads the Digital Society programme MICHAEL DRAKE is Emeritus Professor, The Open University, UK SOPHIE FORGAN is Visiting Research Fellow, School of Arts & Media, University of Teesside, UK JEREMY J.D.GREENWOOD is Director of the British Trust for Ornithology and Honorary Professor of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia and University of Birmingham, UK ALEX J.HUNT is Regional Policy Officer for the National Trust in Yorkshire and the North East, UK DAVID N. LIVINGSTONE is Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen's University of Belfast and a Fellow of the British Academy, UK JOHN H. MCKAY is currently researching Scottish Industrial History in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods with particular reference to the shale oil industry CASPAR MELVILLE is a freelance journalist, part-time lecturer and commissioning editor for the global affairs website openDemocracy.net. DOROTHY SHERIDAN is Director of the Mass-Observation Archive, Head of Special Collections and Co-Director of the Centre for Life History Research, University of Sussex, UK KEITH VERNON is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Central Lancashire, UK FRANK WEBSTER is Professor of Sociology, City University London, UK.