Steam ships coaling at Canada Dock c. 1930

Steam ships coaling at Canada Dock c. 1930

A number of departments, including Economic and Social History, Sociology and Civil Engineering, will be involved in a new Centre for Port and Maritime History which will be established early in 1996. The Centre will bring together the research interests of the University and Merseyside Maritime Museum in the history of ports, port cities and maritime commerce. It will take advantage of archival resources held at the Museum, the University and the City Record Office which have few parallels anywhere in the world.

The Department of Economic and Social History has a long tradition of scholarly activity in the field of maritime and port-city history, and the pursuit of scholarship is a key objective of National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (NMGM).

The University and Merseyside Maritime Museum already undertake collaborative research, and a jointly funded and administered research scholarship, the William McQuie Mather Research Fellowship, was established in 1986.

The new Centre will build on the success of this Fellowship and draw together the related interests of not only those in the parent institutions but also those whose interests are in architecture, engineering, tropical medicine, foreign trade and regional history. It will provide a natural access route for visiting scholars wishing to work on NMGM archives and other local repositories.

The new Centre will be managed by two co-directors: Professor Robert Lee, Head of the Department of Economic and Social History, and Mr Adrian Jarvis, Curator of Port History at Merseyside Maritime Museum, who will be responsible for the Centre's day-to-day operation. An interdisciplinary steering committee will include a number of honorary external consultants with distinguished reputations in port and shipping history.

Following the transfer to Liverpool of HM Customs and Excise archives, a new Research Fellowship in the History of Customs and Excise is to be established, initially for three years, by Customs and Excise and NMGM. Both the Mather Research Fellow and the Customs and Excise Research Fellow will be directly associated with the new Centre.

The Centre will also be largely involved in the organising of a major international conference in August 1996 to mark the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Albert Dock.

February 1996 Index

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