Widening the range of our digital resources: Mass Observation Project
15 Feb 2024
We are pleased to announce our Mass Observation Project online archive has been extended providing access to further material covering the 1990s and 2000s.
- Mass Observation Project (Library Search)
The Mass Observation archive is a pioneering project documenting the social history of Britain. It gathers valuable primary source materials, including survey responses, diaries, letters, lists, maps and photographs, offering a comprehensive insight into the everyday lives, experiences and opinions of ordinary people. These records, generated in response to a series of questionnaires (‘directives’), cover diverse themes such as current events, friends and family, the home, leisure, politics, society, culture, work, finance and the economy and new technology.
Material in Mass Observation Project, (1981-2009), addresses, in depth, a range of topics including attitudes to the USA, reading and television habits, morality and religion, Britain's relations with Europe, UK elections, and pivotal events such as the Falklands War, fall of the Berlin Wall, the Miners’ Strike, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and 9/11.
Interdisciplinary research
The collection stands as an invaluable resource for studying social trends in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In particular, it holds significant value for the University's interdisciplinary research groups in the Humanities, such as the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives, the Cathie Marsh Institute (CMI) and the Centre On the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CODE)
Use alongside our Mass Observation Online archive (1937-1967), providing primary material from the original Mass Observation study, for access to some of the most comprehensive sources for qualitative social data in the UK.
Find out more
The collection features on our Sociology, Social Statistics and Social Change, Politics and History Subject Guides.
- Mass Observation Project (Library Search)