Category Archives: History of Art

To celebrate History Day 2025 at London’s Senate House this week, we’ve put together a reading list of essential open access books in history.

If you’re attending, Pat Gordon-Smith, our commissioning editor, will be there to talk you through our extensive list of published and forthcoming titles, and answer questions about how to publish your next open access book with UCL Press.

Join the UCL Press mailing list to find out more about the latest open access titles, or visit our stand!

History

Museums and Heritage

Teaching History

Join Thomas Kador, author of the new textbook Object-based Learning: Exploring Museums and Collections in Education for an afternoon and evening of events and activities, centring on UCL’s museums and their unique collections.

To mark the publication of Thomas Kador’s Object-based Learning: Exploring Museums and Collections in Education, that author is hosting an Object-based Learning (OBL) workshop followed by a reception and book launch.

The workshop will take place at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, and provides an opportunity to encounter and explore some of the objects that are featured in the book as well as a range of other OBL activities.

This will be followed by a reception and book launch at the Grant Museum of Zoology, introduced by Professor Helen Chatterjee.

While this book will be freely downloadable from early September (via the link below), paper copies will be available for purchase on the day. https://uclpress.co.uk/book/object-based-learning/

Schedule

2.30-4.30pm: OBL workshop at the IAS (and the UCL Art Museum), ground floor, South Wing
Explore some of the objects discussed in the book and participate in a range of object-based activities, facilitated by the book’s author and colleagues from UCL Museums and Collections. 

5.45pm: Book launch and wine reception at the Grant Museum of Zoology
Enjoy a glass of wine, beer or non-alcoholic alternative, meet some more of the specimens discussed in the book and join some conversations about the book in the surroundings of UCL’s recently refurbished Grant Museum.

You can choose to attend one or both sections of the day. Please select the relevant ticket when registering: 
https://object-based-learning.eventbrite.co.uk

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.

Read and download free.

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.

Read and download free,

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.

Read and download free,

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.

Read and download free.

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?

Read and download free

We’ll be back next month with more open access gems. Until then, stay safe, and happy reading!