R. Finnegan 
Participating in the Knowledge Society 
Researchers Beyond the University Walls

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.

Table of Content

Note on Contributors Preface Introduction: Looking Beyond the Walls; R.Finnegan PART 1: LOOKING BACK To the Heavens from Rural Lancashire: Jeremiah Horrocks and his Circle, and the Foundation of British Astronomical Research; A.Chapman Collectors Harnessed: Research on the British Flora by Nineteenth-Century Amateur Botanists; D.E.Allen Scientific Inquiry and the Missionary Enterprise; D.N.Livingstone Listening and Learning: Audiences and their Roles in Nineteenth-Century Britain; S.Forgan the State, 1916-1939; K.Vernon PART 2: OUTSIDE AND ACROSS THE WALLS A Brief History of Field Archaeology in the UK: The Academy, the Profession and the Amateur; A.J.Hunt Inside Out or Outside In? The Case of Family and Local History; M.Drake Community Historians and their Work Around the Millenium; J.H.Mc Kay Researching Ourselves? The Mass-Observation Project; D.Sheridan Science with a Team of Thousands: The British Trust for Ornithology; J.J.D.Greenwood Think Tanks and Intellectual Authority Outsidethe University: Information Technocracy or Republic of Letters?; D.Cummings PART 3: OPENINGS AND CHALLENGES THROUGH THE WEB? Everyday Domestic Research in the Knowledge Society: How Ordinary People Use Information and Communication Technologies to Participate; B.Anderson Building Knowledge Through Debate: Opendemocracy on the Internet; C.Melville Blogging: Personal Participation in Public Knowledge-Building on the Web; M.Brady Using the Internet as a Research Tool: Between Information and Communication; W.Davies PART 4: REFLECTIONS: ARE THERE LESSONS FOR THE PRESENT? Research, Universities and the Knowledge Society; F.Webster Re-Opening Research: New Amateurs or New Professionals?; R.Barnett Index

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 Ph D, 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 (Io I) 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 open Democracy.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 VERNONis Senior Lecturer in History, University of Central Lancashire, UK FRANK WEBSTER is Professor of Sociology, City University London, UK.