Pioneers of Social Research, 1996-2012
Creators: name: Thompson, P.
Publisher: name: UK Data Service
Year: 2019

description: This is a qualitative data collection. The Pioneers of Social Research collection includes the full interview transcripts, interview summaries and edited thematic highlights of detailed life story interviews with a number of pioneers of social research. Conducted by pioneering oral historian, Paul Thompson and his colleagues, the interviews cover each individual's covers family and social background and key influences with detailed accounts of major projects. Because of their detail, these interviews are long – in Peter Townsend’s case extending to twenty hours of recording. The material provides a valuable insight into their lives and careers.&lt;br&gt;
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Those recorded also include Michael Young, Janet Finch and Colin Bell on family, kinship and community; W.M. Williams on rural and Meg Stacey on urban community studies; Dennis Marsden on single mothers and education; Stan Cohen on deviance and prisons; George Brown and Tirril Harris on the social origins of depression; Ray Pahl on urban sociology; Paul Thompson on oral history; and Sir Raymond Firth on anthropology in the Pacific and in Britain and Sir Jack Goody and Mary Douglas on Africa and anthropological theory. &lt;br&gt;
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The data collection results from two grants since 2009; the first from the British Academcy and the second from Leverhulme, where a further 12 Pioneers were interviewed, including more accounts from women researchers; by adding more anthropologists; and by including some contributions on the linked social research in cultural studies and social geography. Ann Oakley, John Davis, John Rex, Pat Caplan, and Peter Hall. &lt;br&gt;
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The archived collection so far includes interviews with 32 pioneers; see Data List in the documentation for a list of those interviewed. All are fully transcribed as well as summarised in detail and have been published to the UK Data Service’s online data browsing system, Qualibank. Use Explore Online to explore the interviews, summaries and extracts.&lt;br&gt;
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Audio extracts have been selected by Thompson for each pioneer and can be listened to on the UK Data Service's &lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmK1mj5dCq0XuCWI7DVKx2w/playlists?disable_polymer=1" title="YouTube Pioneers channel"&gt;YouTube Pioneers channel&lt;/a&gt; where each Pioneer has its own playlist.&lt;br&gt;
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The UK Data Service has also created the &lt;a href="http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/teaching-resources/pioneers.aspx" title="Pioneers Teaching resource: Pioneers"&gt;Pioneers Teaching resource: Pioneers&lt;/a&gt; webpages to showcase the Pioneers, and includes further information about the Pioneers project, and for each Pioneer, a short biography, a list of publications, and links to any data they have themselves deposited. &lt;br&gt;
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The original edition of this data collection, released in 2011, included five interviews and summaries. For the second edition (January 2014), 27 further interviews and summaries have been added. The third edition added interview from: Daniel Bertaux, Dennis Marsden. For the fourth edition, interviews with George Brown and John Bynner were added.&lt;br&gt;
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Some of the Pioneers were also video interviewed earlier as part of the Leading Thinkers project, hosted by the &lt;a href="http://sms.cam.ac.uk/" title="University of Cambridge Video and Audio service"&gt;University of Cambridge Video and Audio service&lt;/a&gt;. The collection also holds video interviews with a range of pioneering anthropologists, historians, ethno-musicologists, international travellers, amongst others. &lt;br&gt;
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