Trustees
Mr Simon Garfield
Simon Garfield is the author of fourteen books of non-fiction, including four edited volumes of diaries from the Mass Observation Archive: Our Hidden Lives, We Are At War, Private Battles and Dear Bessie. He is currently at work on a new volume.
Mr John Brewer
John graduated from Oxford University in 1987 with a BA in Modern History. He worked in financial markets, as a trader and investor, for nearly thirty years and is now retired and living in Brighton, spending much of his time providing project management and research services to collectors, friends and enthusiasts within the classic car industry.
Ms Jane Harvell
Jane Harvell is the Director of Library Culture and Heritage and Chair of Research Library UK (RLUK). Her interests are in academic publishing and partnership working and for many years has been closely involved with the work of Mass Observation through a number of different roles in the Library.
Professor Ben Highmore
Ben Highmore is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex. He first encountered Mass-Observation in the early 1990s as part of his doctoral research on approaches to the study of everyday life. His most recent involvement with Mass-Observation is an essay in a volume that is republishing their very first pamphlet. He is the author of ten books including The Great Indoors: At home in the modern British house and The Art of Brutalism: Rescuing hope from catastrophe in 1950s Britain. He is currently writing a history of the playground in its various guises.
Dr Fiona Courage
I have worked with Mass Observation since 2000 alongside the other archival collections at the University of Sussex, and as the Archive’s curator I was responsible for its care and accessibility. This includes the acquisition of new material and ensuring the provision of research and learning support. I have also worked on projects to engage both the Higher Education and wider community and provide support for data collection projects. I have had the opportunity to speak about the Mass Observation Archive on many occasions, throughout the UK and further afield and have written articles on the Archive.
Dr Michelle Johansen
Michelle Johansen is a historian and educator with over twenty years experience of delivering archive learning workshops in London museums and archives. These workshops explore modern British history, with a particular interest in everyday life and untold stories of a type documented at MOA. Michelle has worked with all types of learners, including primary school pupils, university students, SEN groups and adult learners. Michelle is also researching the biographical history of public libraries. Focusing on social mobility, masculinity and self education, her findings have been published in the London Journal, Cultural and Social History Journal, and elsewhere. She joined the Trustee Board in June 2019 to advise on learning and education.
Professor Hestor Barron
Hester Barron arrived at Sussex in 2007, having completed her D.Phil. at Oxford. She specialises in twentieth-century British social history. Her first book, ‘The 1926 Miners’ Lockout: Meanings of Community in the Durham Coalfield’, was published by OUP in December 2009. It focused on the miners’ lockout of 1926, exploring the relationship between class, region and nation and community. Themes of identity and community thread throughout her work, and since then her research has converged around the broad themes of childhood, parenting and schooling. She has also taught and supervised extensively on the British experience of the Second World War. In 2021 she published a trade book, co-authored with Claire Langhamer, ‘Class of ’37: Voices from working-class girlhood’, which drew upon essays written by schoolchildren for the research organisation Mass-Observation in 1937. Her second monograph, ‘The Social World of the School: Education and Community in Interwar London’ was published by MUP in 2022.
Professor Lucy Noakes
Lucy is the Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex. She has worked with Mass Observation since her days at the University of Sussex as a PHD student, where she used material from both the original Mass Observation Archive and from the contemporary Mass Observation Project to explore how the experience and memory of Britain’s Second World War is shaped by gender. Since then she has continued to draw on Mass Observation in both her research and teaching, using it to explore understandings of Armistice Day in 1930s Britain, the management of emotions in the Second World War, and public engagement with the centenary of the First World War between 2014-18. Her most recent publication, Mass Observation material is Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and bereavement in Second World War Britain (Manchester University Press: 2020) makes widespread use of Mass Observation.
Scarlett O’Malley
Meg Sweeney
Meg holds a BA in Anthropology & History and an MA in Contemporary History from the University of Sussex, where her award-winning oral history research explored youth, music and fan culture. She is a writer and Editor of Rapture, a Brighton-based music, arts and culture magazine. Meg has collaborated with Dr Mimi Haddon on the Music for Girls research project, co-curating the exhibition and speaking as a panellist at the Brighton Festival. She currently works in Global Engagement at the University of Sussex, focusing on international summer study and the online Internationalisation at Home programme. Meg joined the Board in Spring 2025 as a Young Trustee.