Dr James Hopkins

I lead on University History and Heritage at the University of Manchester. My post is a hybrid academic-public historian role, which is the first of its kind in the UK. My academic work currently focuses on on transnational networks of knowledge in the early to mid-twentieth century. This develops and expands on my PhD research on the history of universities and learned institutions, which has recently been published. I’m particularly interested in how knowledge networks were created and sustained over and through national boundaries and how forces inside and outside the academy have sought to disrupted them.

 

I am responsible for the University's History and Heritage through three core themes:

1) Promoting and leading academic research on the history of the University, universities and learned institutions. Through this theme, our University History Research Group seeks to make an original contribution to our knowledge of the history of universities in their specific and global contexts and to link to cognate fields.

2) Engaging diverse audiences in the UK and globally with the history of the University. 

3) Conservation of the University’s heritage, including our archives, artefacts and historic built environment in collaboration with the University Library, our Cultural Institutions such as the John Rylands Library, and University Estates.