New open access books published in September 2025
Posted on 1st October, 2025
September marks the start of a new academic year, and UCL Press welcomed it with a selection of five new open access titles. September’s releases spanned museum studies, pedagogy, urban knowledge co-production, Victorian collecting, and children’s wellbeing in cities.
Object-Based Learning: Exploring museums and collections in education
Thomas Kador
Object-Based Learning provides a concise overview of some of the most important approaches to material culture and object analysis in plain and easily understandable language, that is equally accessible to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as lecturers.
Millionaire Shopping: The collections of Alfred Morrison, 1821-1897
Edited by Caroline Dakers
Millionaire Shopping is the first full, detailed and original account of the huge and unstoppable collecting and patronage of Alfred Morrison (1821-1897) who was one of the most important Victorian collectors and patrons of the arts. Each chapter is written by an expert in the field and dedicated to a particular aspect of Morrison’s collecting and patronage.
Urban Childhoods: Growing up in inequality and hope
Edited by Claire Cameron
Urban Childhoods puts children’s and families’ voices centre stage while investigating ways of bringing children’s wellbeing to the fore in planning for urban life. The book explores themes that start from what children find important and details strategies that emerged from a major prevention programme conducted in two English cities.
Co-production of Knowledge in Action: Emancipatory strategies for urban equality
Cassidy Johnson, Vanesa Castán Broto, Wilbard Kombe, Catalina Ortiz, Barbara Lipietz, Emmanuel Osuteye, Caren Levy
Co-production of Knowledge in Action examines how co-production is articulated and deployed in cities such as Lima, Freetown, Kampala, Dar es Salaam and Delhi. It engages with ongoing experiences of co-production-inspired action, mapping the different aspirations that inform co-production practices and the impacts on urban communities.
Deconstituting Museums: Participation’s affective work
Helen Graham
Deconstituting Museums argues that participation collides with dominant paradigms of inclusion, diversity and decision-making on behalf of ‘future generations’ and ‘the public’. Participation draws in ideas from direct and horizontal political traditions. How might participation and its affects enable new political structures of heritage?
We’ll be back next month with more open access gems. Until then, stay safe, and happy reading!