Ben Gidley papers

Scope and Content

Contains material collected at the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths in its engagement with regeneration and community politics in London, and in particular in East and Southeast London, especially in Deptford, New Cross and other parts of the borough of Lewisham. It includes documentation relating to the major regeneration programmes in the area from the mid-1990s to 2009, including Deptford City Challenge, as well as materials relating to community mobilisation around these. Also contains material relating to social movements from the late 1980s to the end of the twentieth century. Its focus is the UK, and in particular London, and includes material on anti-fascist, ant-racist, anti-gentrification, anti-capitalist, environmental, anarchist, and Marxist movements:

Deptford papers 1982-2008: Convoys Wharf 2000-2004; Local Economy 2003-2004, Pepys Community Forum 1998-2008; Deptford Community Forum 1997-2003; Lewisham Strategic Partnership/Lewisham Community Network research 2002-2004; Docklands 1982-1993; Lewisham politics 2001-2008; General files 1994-2006

Social Movements: 'Brixton/LA' 1994-1997; 'Communities of Resistance' 1993-1998; 'Anarchist etc, 90's' 1990-2008; 'Exeter Left, 80s-90s' 1988-1998; 'Anti Capital, Roads etc' 1993-2003; Marxism c 1998-1999; 'Trotskyist etc 90s' 1992-2003; 'Autonmism, Dead Russian Men'; Green Anarchist etc, 90s'; Anti-Fash'; Zapatistas'; Psycho-geography'; 'Roads, squatting, prisoners etc'; general papers, publications and printed material

Administrative / Biographical History

Dr Ben Gidley, BA Anthropology, MA Urban Studies, PhD Sociology, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London, since 2015. Studied at Goldsmiths 1993-2003: Anthropology as an undergraduate and Urban Studies at MA, and has a PhD in Sociology (on citizenship and belonging among East London Jewish radicals in the early twentieth century) from Goldsmiths' College, University of London. He was born in Exeter, Devon, and was politically active in Exeter from 1988-1993 and in London from 1991-2000, in anti-racism and urban social movements. Before joining Birkbeck, he worked with the University of Oxford, before which he was research fellow with the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths' College from 1998-2009. During that period, he was involved in several policy-engaged research projects on topics around urban regeneration, community politics, migration, integration and diversity, funded by local authorities, local NGOs, research councils, charitable trusts, the European Union and government departments. A large amount of his work and interest at this time related to the Deptford and New Cross communities around the South East London area in which Goldsmiths College is based.

Arrangement

Series headings are those of the creator; material generally arranged chronologically within series

Access Information

Open

Accruals

None expected