Building a Radical University: A history of the University of East London

As leaders of a ‘people’s university’, part of the vast post-1960s expansion in British higher education, UEL’s first generation of educationalists was committed to innovation and to creating a new democratic identity for their institution. They were also determined to extend access to higher education to those previously excluded, and to offer East Londoners, at a time of social deprivation and political turbulence, the vocational education to meet their aspirations. In this book, leading figures in UEL’s history describe its radical accomplishments across a broad range of subject areas including Architecture, Cultural Studies, Fashion Textiles, Independent Studies, Law, and Refugee Studies. These chapters, including three by former students, evoke the excitement of an environment in which there was so much opportunity to invent, to do things differently. The book is an excellent and detailed resource for all those with an interest in the history and future of higher education in the UK, and particularly the legacy of polytechnics and new universities. At a time of intense marketisation in the UK’s higher education sector, this book insists on the possibility of democratic educational innovation and renewal.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: A Radical University? Gavin Poynter and Michael Rustin 1. Anthropology 2. The Architecture School 3. Rethinking Art and Design in the 1970s 4. The Centre for Institutional Studies 5. The Centre for Narrative Research 6. Creating Cultural Studies 7. East London Research 8. A New Economics 9. Fashion and Textile Futures 10. Feminism in the Academy: Women’s Studies 11. An Outpost of History 12. Independent Study 13. Innovation Studies and Its Roots 14. A Radical Law School? 15. Physiotherapy: A Story of Change 16. Sixty Years of Innovating in Applied Psychology 17. The Emergence of Psychosocial Studies 18. Refugee Studies – the East London experience 19. Sociology @ East London 20. The Tavistock-UEL Partnership Experiences of former students: 21. The Air Vibrated: Anxiety, Excitement and Intellectual Endeavour, Amal Treacher Kabesh 22. Bloody Snobs, Tanya Frank 23. Interview, Francesca Hughes and Christine Hawley

About the Author :
Michael Rustin was Head of Department of Sociology at UEL from 1974-88 and Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences from 1991-2001. He was also a Visiting Fellow at the School of Sciences, Institute for Advanced Studies. Gavin Poynter joined UEL from the Trade Union Education Department of the TUC in 1988. He was head of schools and departments at UEL for 20 years before becoming Professor of Social Sciences in 2008 and is now Professor (Emeritus).