Andrew Flinn

Andrew Flinn is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Archives and Records Management MA programme in the Department of Information Studies at University College London 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 teaching oral history and supporting work in cultural heritage informatics. He has recently completed a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council 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.

A member of the ICARUS research centre at UCL his research interests include independent archives and community history projects, documenting activism and under-voiced communities, oral and public history, archival activism and democratizing heritage, user generated content and participatory approaches to archival practice, and the relationship between archives, heritage and identities. Recent publications include ‘“It is noh mistri, wi mekin histri”. Telling Our Own Story: Independent and Community Archives in the United Kingdom, Challenging and Subverting the Mainstream’ in Bastian & Alexander (eds.) Community Archives. The shaping of memory (London 2009), '"An attack on professionalism and scholarship"?: Democratising Archives and the Production of Knowledge.' Ariadne 62 (2010), ‘The impact of independent and community archives on professional archival thinking and practice’ in Hill (ed) The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping, (London, 2010) and ‘Archival Activism: Independent and Community-led Archives, Radical Public History and the Heritage Professions’ InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 7(2) 2011.

For further details see:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/dis/people/andrewflinn

Twitter: Andyucl