
The Voluntary Action History Society’s 8th International Conference will take place at the University of Liverpool between 2 and 4 July 2025. The conference will return to the University, site of previous friendly and successful conferences, most recently in 2022.
The Conference will explore the historical development of voluntary action in all its variety in terms of subjects, types of activity, time periods, locations and uses.
This conference will, for the first time, foreground the methodologies we use, which have been challenged by ‘critical’ rethinking of subjects such as gender; race and colonialism; the emergence of new types and ways of using data; pressures to be more ‘theoretical’ in data gathering and analysis; time pressures and research ‘efficiency’; and the impact of institutional funding on what we research and how we do it. All of these pressures suggest that we cannot remain ‘the way we were’ but must embrace – at least to a debatable extent – new ways of doing voluntary action research.
Full call for papers to follow. Please email vahsconference@gmail.com with any queries.