This collection comprises of around 100 interviews with ex-coal miners and their families that were conducted by a research team led by Prof Keith Gildart and funded by the AHRC in partnership with the General Federation of Trade Unions and the national mining museums of England, Scotland and Wales between 2017-2021. The project has recently be completed and the interviews will be accessible once transcription, editing and storage is complete. The interviews are cross-generational and were drawn from the following collieries: Annesley-Bentinck, Barony, Bickershaw, Easington, Markham, Point of Ayr, Prince of Wales, and Tower. The interviews shed new light on the changing nature of mining work, the transformation of coal communities, the 1984/5 strike, the domestic and cultural life of miners’, and the experiences of women and children. 

Since 1972 the Dictionary of Labour Biography (DLB) project has been an established international research resource for scholars and students in the field of labour, social and working-class history. The Dictionary has made an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the origins and development of the British trade union movement, the Labour Party, the Communist Party and associated socialist organisations. It is used by academics, local/regional historians, the trade union movement and family history researchers. The late Eric Hobsbawm described the DLB as ‘the best of its kind anywhere in the world’. The first ten volumes were edited by Professor John Savile and Dr Joyce Bellamy (University of Hull) and published by Palgrave Macmillan between 1972 and 2000. Subsequent volumes (11, 12, 13, 14 and 15) have been edited by Professor Keith Gildart (University of Wolverhampton) and Professor David Howell (University of York) and published by Palgrave Macmillan between 2003-2019. Unlike other encyclopaedia/dictionary projects the DLB contains lengthy biographical/analytical essays drawing on a broad range of primary sources.  Research is currently underway on entries that will form the basis of volumes 16 and 17. The editors welcome the submission of proposed subjects for future volumes.

Much of the work of historians on the composition of the New Model Army has been vitiated by incomplete and erroneous information about the composition of the officer corps of the army as it changed over time. The aim is to produce a definitive listing that will be of permanent benefit to both professional and amateur historians. Volume one covering all the officers with commissions (that is quartermaster to captain general) for the period from the New Model’s formation in April 1645 until the outbreak of war with Scotland in June 1650 will be ready for publication by the end of 2014. A second volume covering the army in England, Scotland and Ireland 1650-1660 will take another two years to complete. Professor Malcolm Wanklyn (University of Wolverhampton) has uncovered masses of material about the careers of ordinary soldiers in the New Model Army, which shows that there was an unexpectedly high level of movement from one regiment to another, and also a change between 1645 and 1650 which is perhaps best described as topographical. Initially the army was very largely composed of officers and men from the south-east of the country By 1650 it included soldiers from almost all parts of England apart from the far south-west.

This archive has been established by the University of Wolverhampton’s Department of History, Politics and War Studies and contains a collection of interviews with World War Two veterans, predominantly conducted since 2011. Matthew Lucas headed the programme, helped by John Buckley, both of whom have been involved in the study of the Second World War since the early 1990s either as researchers, teachers or battlefield guides. Most of the interviews have been with British Army veterans who fought in the Northwest European Campaign of 1944-5, from D-Day to the end of the war. They have been used in teaching (undergraduate courses such as The Battle for Normandy 1944 and War in Europe 1939-45 and postgraduate courses such as The Victory Campaign 1944-5) and in publications such as John Buckley, Monty’s Men: The British Army and the Liberation of Europe 1944-5 (Yale, 2013). The interviews will also form the basis of an oral history book of the Northwest European Campaign to be published by Pen and Sword.

To access the archive please contact John Buckley.

A dictionary of nearly 4,000 terms found used in documents relating to trade and retail in early modern Britain.

It is hosted by British History Online and you can go directly to the website .To find out a little more, read this extract from the introduction: 
A dictionary that explains 'zoobditty match' ...

The dictionary of terms related to traded goods and commodities, 1550-1820 is the work of the Dictionary Project at the University of Wolverhampton. It grew out of the work carried out to produce the Gloucester Coastal Port Books in the 1990s, and the present publication with British History Online is the first instalment of circa 4,000 terms found used in documents relating to trade and retail. The work on capturing the day-to-day language of commerce continues, with a view to publishing the next instalment of terms in subsequent editions. 

The editors are not lexicographers but historians, not specialists but 'experts on being generalists'. Together with specialists they present a new dictionary for historians and those who are interested in early modern economic and social history and in the language of trade at that time. The aim is to name and explain the many different types of traded goods that have long since disappeared or that have changed over the years. These include 'zoobditty match', a rich sauce or pickle based on fish, which came from India and was popular at fashionable tables in the late eighteenth century.

An understanding of the vocabulary of trade is an essential tool for historians of the early modern period, and yet it is one that is ill served by existing dictionaries and historical research alike. Items both exotic and mundane such as 'carnation tape' and Daffy's Elixir, as well as those produced as a result of technological advances by specialist producers, each had an impact on contemporary life throughout the country. The dictionary aims to be more than a compilation of existing references. It offers an informed understanding of the complex relationships between innovation, the market place and the consumer, and a fascinating insight into nearly 300 years of material culture.  Enjoy your visit!