Biography: Andrew Flinn is a Reader in Archival Studies and Oral History and until 2015 Director of the Archives and Records Management and Records and Archive Management (International) MA programmes in the Department of Information Studies at University College London and was the chair of the UK and Ireland Forum for Archives and Records Management Education and Research (FARMER) between 2008 and 2011. In 2011 he was a visiting professor and the Allan Smith Visiting Scholar in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, Boston. He has recently completed a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded research project 'Community archives and identities' which examined the motivations, impacts and challenges of independent and community-led archive and heritage initiatives of African, Asian and other heritage groups in the UK and also worked on another AHRC funded project to assess the impact of Freedom of Information legislation on local government recordkeeping. His research interests include independent archives and community history projects, oral history, archival activism and democratizing heritage, user generated content and participatory approaches to archival practice, the relationship between archives, heritage and identities and the impact of access to information legislation on democratic processes. Andrew has also written widely on aspects of all of the above, recent works inlcude 'The impact of independent and community archives on professional archival thinking and practice' in Hill (ed) The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping, (London, 2011) and 'Archival Activism: Independent and Community-led Archives, Radical Public History and the Heritage Professions', InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 7(2) (2011).
