Swansea University: Campus and Community in a Post-War World, 19452020

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Founded in 1920, Swansea University is now the third-largest university in Wales, serving nearly twenty thousand students This volume celebrates the centennial of the university, offering a portrait of postwar academic and social change in Britain and its universities, as well as an exploration of shifts in youth culture, and the ways higher education institutions have interacted with their areas and communities. The book covers a range of important themes and topics, including architectural developments, international scholars, the changing behaviors of students, protest and politics, and the multilayered relationships that are formed among academics, young people and their wider communities. Unlike most institutional histories, it takes a bottom-up approach, paying particular attention to the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of students and non-academic staff, members of the university community who are normally sidelined in such accounts. As it does so, it draws on a large collection of oral history testimonies collected specifically for this book, and, throughout, it explores how formative, paradoxical, and unexpected university life can be.

Reviews

Deeply researched and elegantly written, this book is essential reading for alumni, staff, and students at Swansea. And it deserves a wider readership. It will appeal to all historians of higher education, to policy makers and university leaders, and to anyone interested in how the past may help shape the future of teaching and research in Wales and beyond.

-- William Whyte, University of Oxford

Author Bio

Sam Blaxland is a Post-doctoral Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Swansea University.