Dr Paul Martin

I am a cultural historian though highly interdisciplinary with a background in labour and public history. I am a part-time distance learning tutor for many of the modules within the M.A in Museum Studies and have been so since the distance learning program’s inception in 1998. I began after completing my PhD on contemporary popular collecting and museums (supervised by Professor Susan Pearce). Prior to this I had completed a range of voluntary work in museums such as Brighton Art Gallery and Museum, Hove Art Gallery and Museum, Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry and The Sussex Archaeological Trust.

I came to higher education late, as an adult having left school at 16 and spending years as an amateur musician, unskilled worker and trade unionist. I developed a strongly autodidactic interest in labour history and gained a Diploma in British radical and labour history from Ruskin College, Oxford in 1988 (an adult education college with strong labour movement support at the time) and then read modern and cultural British history at The University of Sussex for my BA (hons), being the first in my family to have attended university. I then pursued teacher training at Tile Hill FE College, Coventry, gaining a City & Guilds professional level certificate in adult education. The practice element of which, was assisting in the tutoring of dyslexic adult students organised by the British Dyslexia Association. Students ranged from carpet fitters and welders to undergraduates. This informed my empathy with students with learning disabilities at Leicester I undertook voluntary work with the University’s student support center with visually and aurally impaired students during my doctoral study.

I also taught history concomitantly for fifteen years at Ruskin College (1997-2012) part-time. This varied from the entry level ‘return to learn’ taster modules through to the MA in Public History which I co-taught with my colleague and friend Professor Hilda Kean. Again, many adult students had learning issues which also informed my approach to communication and empathy with students.

Studying under the late social historian Raphael (‘Raph’) Samuel at Ruskin College opened the door for me to the whole ‘history from below’ ethos promoted by the History Workshop movement that he co-founded. This has defined my thinking in all my areas of interest which include: material culture especially collecting and object attachment, popular music, politics of the margins and distance learning pedagogy.

Books

• (2013) ed. With Hilda Kean, The Public History Reader, London, Routledge
• (2002) ed. with Susan Pearce, The Collector’s Voice: Volume IV - The Contemporary Voice, Aldershot, Ashgate Press
• (2002) The Trade Union Badge - Material Culture In Action, Aldershot, Ashgate Press
• (2000) Kean, H.; Martin, P; Morgan, S. eds. Public History Now in Britain, London, Francis Boutle
• (1999) Popular Collecting And The Everyday Self : the reinvention of museums?
  • (1999) London, Leicester University Press Hardback
  • (2001), London, Continuum, Paperback

Edited volume chapters

• (2002) ‘Echoes In the Wilderness: British Popular Conservatism 1945-1951’, Ball, S. & Holliday, I. eds. Mass Conservatism: The Conservatives and the Public since the 1880s, London, Frank Cass, pp.120-138
• (2000) Sound Judgements: the compact disc reissue scene as public history’ in Kean, H.; Martin, P; Morgan, S. eds. Public History Now in Britain, London, Francis Boutle pub. pp.163-182
• (1999) ‘Look, See, Hear: a remembrance with approaches to public history at Ruskin’ in Andrews, G., Kean, H., Thompson, J. eds. Ruskin College: contesting knowledge, dissenting politics, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1999, pp.145-166
• (1999) ‘Contemporary Popular Collecting’ in Knell, S. (ed.) Museums and The Future of Collecting, Aldershot, Ashgate Press: 73-76

Articles

• (2011) (December) A ‘Social Form of Knowledge’ in Practice: Unofficial Compiling of 1960s Pop Music on CDR, Public History Review, Vol.18, pp.129-150 Australian Centre for Public History at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
• (2010) (December) ‘Can You Hear The Beat? reclaiming and reissuing marginal pop music of the 1960s’, Hard Times (Anglo-German cultural collective magazine)
• (1998) ‘A Load Of Old Rubbish?, M.A in Museum Studies by distance learning, Module II, Material Culture course book: 159-170.
  This explores the creation of meaning from ‘rubbish’. It is intended to cause students to question the nature of material value, worth and meaning.
• (1998) ‘Contextualising Mosley’, History Today, Vol.48 (5) May: 62-63
  A philosophical piece which looks at the Channel Four drama, Mosley and the wider historical, cultural and political contexts, both against which it was set, and which it omitted, as well as its postmodernist implications
• (1997) ‘The Vermin Club 1948-1951’, History Today, Vol.47 (6) June: 17-22
  The Vermin Club was a conservative manifestation of reaction against the sweeping Labour victory in 1945. The paper tells the tale of the organisation which was formed as a result of Nye Bevan’s reference to the Tories as ‘lower than vermin’ for their record on health care provision, in a 1948 speech.
• (1996) ‘Tomorrow's History Today: post-modern collecting’, History Today, Vol.46 (2) February: 5-8
  A 'think piece', drawn from research for my doctoral thesis. I discuss the possible future of material culture in a society geared towards the material-less environment of the internet and cyberspace. The future of museums and heritage in such a society is posited.
• (1995) ‘Collectors, Museums And Community’, Museological Review Vol.1 (2): 77-86
  Relationships between collectors, museums, market traders and dealers etc. are discussed, and a proposal for a closer working relationship between them is made in the interests of the material collected, the knowledge of its context and history and the widening of definitions of ‘heritage’.
• (1994) ‘The Origins and Relevance of Popular Collecting’, Museological Review Vol.1 (1): 42-45
  The history of popular collecting is traced from the late Victorian seaside souvenir industry
• (1994) ‘Badgering The Union’, History Today, Vol.44 (1) January: 9-12
  This discusses the use of lapel badges by dock workers and miners between 1890 and 1950 as a means of membership control and union organisation.
• (1992) ‘Spain's Other Olympics’, History Today, Vol.42 (8) August: 6-8.
  This is an oral history project I carried out with one of the surviving participants of the abandoned 'Olympiad Popular' of 1936. This was to be held in Barcelona, in opposition to the official Berlin Olympics. It was abandoned because of the outbreak of the civil war. The publication was aimed to coincide with the official Barcelona Olympics of 1992.

Additionally, I have written music articles in physical formats such as Bucketful of Brains and Mojo. I have also written for internet publication such as Trip Inside This House and the late Sweet Floral Albion: The online journal of British psychedelia. 

I am also included as a subject in two music books:

• Panciera, Mario (2007) 45 Revolutions: UK Punk, New Wave and Indie singles In The Years of Anarchy, Chaos and Destruction – 1976-1979, Hurdy Gurdy Books, Italy. Entries for Fan Club; The Molesters (1,200pp hardback reference book).
• Ogg, Alex (2006) No More Heroes: A complete history of UK punk 1976-1980 (Cherry Red Books, London). Entries for Fan Club pp.232-234; The Molesters pp.370-371.

Reviews

I have written reviews over the years for various publications such as Journal of Contemporary British History; History Workshop Journal, Shindig! Magazine; Musicological Review. These are examples:

• (2016) Irene Morra - Britishness, Popular Music and National Identity: The Making of Modern Britain. Reviews in History, Institute of Historical Research (17/3/2016).
• (2010) Graeme Were and J.C.H. King eds. Extreme Collecting: Challenging Practices for 21st Century Museums, Berghahn Books. Peer review report for publisher.
• (2002 –2013) Shindig! magazine. Monthly reviews of 1960s CDs and LPs.
• (2009) Gordon Thompson, Please Please Me: Sixties British pop, inside out Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, Journal of Contemporary British History (University of Birmingham), Autumn 2009.
• (1996) ‘At Home With Constable’s Cornfield’, History Workshop Journal. No.42, Autumn:190-194
  A critical review of the National Gallery exhibition on popular ownership of reproductions of this picture
• (1996) ‘Canadian Folk Art’, Museological Review, Vol 2 (1): 99-102
  Critical review of the Canadian Museum of Civilisation’s publication Les Paradis du Monde: L’art Populaire de Québec (1995)

I supervise a range of MA dissertations and modules within Museum Studies. I learn from the students as well as advising them and have enthusiastically travelled through the UK and much of the world (in my head!) in what they have researched and presented in their work. I would like to thank them all for these journeys and explorations of subjects, themes and ideas that have added to and enriched my own knowledge and understanding over the years and still continue to do so!

As a distance learning tutor I guide students through many of the modules within the Museum Studies course. My main enthusiasms though are in Objects and Collections, Designing for Creative Lives and Heritage. 

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Since 2007 (now Advance HE).
• GDH Cole Prize, History dissertation, Ruskin College 1988.