Robinson, Lucy (2016) Collaboration in, collaboration out: the eighties in the age of digital reproduction. Cultural and Social History, 13 (3). pp. 403-423. ISSN 1478-0038

PDF (For REF only) - Published Version Restricted to SRO admin only Download (1MB)

Abstract

In this article I will bring together the practical, pedagogical and theoretical implications of a relatively small digitisation project, ‘Observing the 80s’, in order to explore the ways in which ‘the digital’ might transform historical practice. In it I will outline a process of collaboration, juxtaposition and engagement with the “unknown” in a higher education context that is increasingly quantified and goals-orientated. There is a well established literature on the digital’s potential for transforming historical practice, as well as a growing set of literature that tries to bring together the pedagogical and researcher sides of our academic identities. I seek to address both of these lines of discussion through a focus on the collaborative possibilities enabled by the Observing the 80s project based at the University of Sussex. At every stage of the project’s production, content and useage rather than finding quantifiable isolated benefits, or indeed problems, of digitisation, we found an ongoing process of negotiation between the designed for, and the pragmatic and unknowable.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Digital History, Mass Observation, Thatcherism, Periodisation, Oral History, The Eighties, Walter Benjamin, Pedagogy
Schools and Departments:	School of History, Art History and Philosophy > History
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D016 Methodology- General works D History General and Old World > DA History of Great Britain
Depositing User:	Lucy Robinson
Date Deposited:	08 Jul 2016 08:51
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2021 11:45
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/57327

View download statistics for this item

📧 Request an update