Community Archives, Community Spaces: Heritage, Memory and Identity

Andrew Flinn is the Director of the Archives and Records Management MA program in the Department of Information Studies at University College London, where he has been teaching since 2002,  and was the chair of the UK and Ireland Forum for Archives and Records Management Education and Research (FARMER) between 2008 and 2011. In the Spring term 2011 he was a visiting professor and the Allan Smith Visiting Scholar in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College Boston. In 2012 and 2013 he was Principal Investigator on the "Dig Where You Stand" a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded Research into Community Heritage award which examines a collaborative approach to community heritage activity including archives, archaeology, museums, film studies and digital humanity scholars. Between 2008 and 2010 he led another AHRC funded research project "Community Archives and Identities" which examined the motivations, impacts and challenges of independent and community-led archive and heritage initiatives of African, Asian and other heritage groups in the UK. Prior to his appointment at UCL he was an archivist at the National Museum of Labour History in 1990-1999 and research officer at the University of Manchester on the ESRC funded Communists in British Society Biographical project (1999-2001). He received his PhD from University of Manchester in 1999. His research interests include radical public history, independent archives and community history projects, oral history, heritage activism and social justice, user generated content and participatory approaches to archival practice, DIY culture and the production if knowledge / culture and the impact of access to information legislation on democratic processes. He has also written on different manifestations of grassroots political activism in twentieth century Britain. As a researcher he is interested in further exploring the application of ethnographic, participatory, and community-based approaches to archival research.