2027: Call for Papers

The Business Archives Council of Scotland and the University of Glasgow's Centre for Business History in Scotland invite submissions for a special issue of Business and Industrial History. The issue will celebrate the 90th birthday of Professor Anthony (Tony) Slaven and reflect on the long relationship between business history, archival rescue, surveying, and research use in Scotland and beyond.

Professor Tony Slaven has been central to the development of business history at Glasgow and to the wider institutional life of the field. He succeeded Peter Payne as Colquhoun Lecturer in Business History in 1969, later became Professor of Business History, and in 1987 was appointed the first director of the Centre for Business History in Scotland. His work helped consolidate Glasgow as one of the major centres for business history research in Britain.

Slaven's career also overlapped closely with the growth of business archives in Scotland. During the early 1970s, as business records surveying expanded through regional registrars and then through a dedicated Scottish surveying role (also celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2027), he was involved in the rescue of vulnerable business records in the west of Scotland, including material endangered during the collapse of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. That practical commitment to identifying, preserving and using business archives has remained a defining feature of the Glasgow tradition.

As a scholar, Slaven has ranged widely across the history of shipbuilding, regional development, Scottish enterprise, and the relationship between business, economy and place. His publications include The Development of the West of Scotland, 1750-1960, British Shipbuilding, 1500-2010: A History, co-edited works on business and urban history, and the Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography. Just as importantly, he helped shape the field institutionally: he was one of the key founders of the Association of Business Historians, whose annual doctoral workshop now bears his name and the first president of the European Business History Association.

This special issue therefore takes Tony Slaven's 90th birthday as an opportunity not only to honour an individual career, but also to reflect on the wider business of archives: how collections are found, saved, interpreted and turned into history. We welcome contributions that engage with themes inspired by Slaven's scholarship, by the history of business archives and records surveying, and by the continuing dialogue between archivists and historians.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• the development of business history as a field in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
• business archives surveying, collection development, and the rescue of records at risk
• relationships between archivists, historians, universities, businesses, and professional networks
• shipbuilding, industrial decline, regional development, and other themes associated with Slaven's scholarship
• use of archival collections in new research on business, industry, enterprise, management, or economic life
• reflections from archivists on how surveying and collecting practices have shaped the collections they manage
• case studies focused on particular business archive collections, repositories, or research projects
• other anniversaries, milestones, or retrospectives that illuminate the changing place of business archives and business history