Aston University Archives

The Aston University Archives house materials related to the history of Aston University and its forerunner institutions, the Birmingham Municipal Technical School and the Birmingham Central Technical College. The records start from 1893 and trace the evolution of the University up until today.

The collection includes institutional records, documents, and objects which shed light on education, politics, economics, society and culture in Birmingham and the Midlands. It also chronicles a variety of trades and professions, reflecting both local and global developments.

Additional materials include newspapers, brochures and records of the popular music acts which performed in the Great Hall, together with videos and slides of the campus as it has been built up - and knocked down - as well as campus maps through the decades.

The archives contain works of art as well as notable objects, such as the Parker 51 fountain pen used by HM Queen Elizabeth II when she visited the recently-completed Main Building in 1955.

Some of the artifacts and other materials reflect changing cultural and societal norms over the decades: for example, a silver platter presented to the Senior Common Room by the Academic Wives’ Club in 1967.

For more information about Aston University’s history and archives, you can watch the video above or listen to this Aston Originals podcast.

The archives are closely linked to the History programme at Aston.

If you would like to consult any of these holdings, or if you have items that you think may be of interest to the Aston University Archives, please email us.

The Archives are usually open Monday-Wednesday, 9:00am-5:00pm, but an appointment is essential to secure a table in the reading room and to ensure materials are ready for consultation.

Ongoing Research Projects

The Aston University Archives are closely linked to the History programme at Aston and its ongoing research projects.

Professor Stefan Manz

• Behind the Wire: Civilian Internment in the British Empire, 1914-1919
• World War I in South Africa: Digital and Virtual Experiences (with Dr Joseph Yannielli)

Dr Volker Prott

• Children of the Railway: The Partition of India 75 Years on

Dr Ilaria Scaglia (with Dr Brian Sudlow)

• Hidden Voices: Black Healthcare Workers in the Midlands

Dr Joseph Yannielli

• Birmingham’s Industrial Heritage (with Dr Brian Sudlow)
• The Fugitive Digital

Dr Brian Sudlow

• Birmingham’s Industrial Heritage (with Dr Joseph Yannielli)
• Insights from History on the New Industrial Revolution (with Dr Ahmad Beltagui)

Preserving the Histories of a Community of Makers Exhibition (2022-23)

Thanks to funding from the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust, it has been possible to conserve a number of important historical documents in the archives. In November 2022, Aston Archives Committee unveiled an exhibition in the University's Main Building foyer, showcasing a selection of of these volumes along with contextual information about Aston University's predecessor institutions. In addition to a ribbon-cutting by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Aleks Subic, talks were given by Dr Ilaria Scaglia and Professor Helen Higson, OBE, while Dr Brian Sudlow presented a film about the archives.

View some of the exhibition findings on the Birmingham Municipal Technical School: General Register for Session 1893-94 and Birmingham Municipal Technical School: General Register for Session 1920-21 pages.

Making History with Queen Elizabeth's Pen

On 26 June, 2024, the Aston University community and its friends in the fields of archives, heritage, and culture, gathered at John Cadbury House to celebrate a new exhibition of a remarkable item preserved at the Aston University Archives: the pen that the late Queen Elizabeth II used and gifted when she visited Birmingham to inaugurate the Main Building of what is today Aston University.

Dr Ilaria Scaglia, Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Aston University, researched the history of this object and of the day in which it was used and shared her findings at the event.

The Parker 51 pen

As the Birmingham Pen Museum testifies, there are countless histories that one could write starting from a pen. The first that comes to mind is related to technology, Aston University’s soul. Aston University officially started in 1895 as the Birmingham Municipal Technical School on Suffolk Street. The institution changed name a few times but it stayed true to its origins. It was and still is a place for crafting new things to help people face a fast-changing world. The Parker 51 pen was an object of the kind Aston’s predecessors tried to devise. It was a marvel of craft, meant to provide emancipation from the quill in order to write a new future. As detailed in David and Mark Shepherd’s Parker 51 (2004), Quink, or fast drying ink, had been invented by a Filipino chemist and then introduced by the Parker company in 1931 to free all from the hassle of blotting. Yet Quink corroded the materials fountain pens were previously manufactured from, and new ones needed to be created as a result. Lucite (or PMMA) was patented in 1932 and later applied to anything from aircraft parts to train car windows. Eight different patents were filed to design what one might mistakenly think as ‘just a pen’. 23 components, 238 different operations to manufacture it, 43 of which by hand. There is indeed a story about design and craft to be told, one that is right up Aston’s alley.

There is also a business story, another Aston mark of distinction. The Parker 51 is still regarded as one of the most successful consumer products ever conceived. More than a quarter of a million dollars was invested in its development in 1939. More were made because of its ground-breaking marketing, starting from the number 51 – as 1939 was the 51st year of Parker’s existence. But neither of these histories would make sense without taking into account other external factors. No discipline can ignore the broader historical context in which it operates, and this is especially true for technology. The Parker 51 pen originated from the Great Depression, a time when few could afford luxury items. In hard times, many clung to the look and feel of precious, durable things while also daring to aspire to a more positive, modern future. The breakthrough came through an emotional appeal to their hopes and aspirations: an object designed to evoke fighter plane wings, ‘a pen from another planet’ as it was advertised then, to make the dreams of people on this earth seem within reach. It was a product of globalisation, produced by an American company, tested for all weather conditions in South America, later produced in Canada to be sold throughout the British Empire one of the main reasons for its unprecedented success.

This pen was a war child too. By the time it was premiered in 1941, materials such as brass, copper, and aluminium had become crucial to the war effort. Parker’s London premises at Bush House in Aldwych, were moved out to the west end of the city, to make room for defence activities in the centre. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the same machines designed to produce this artefact’s many parts were now used to make ammunitions. For this reason, the production of this pen was rationed. Marketing was shifted to non-selling in order to make a broader patriotic point ‘shell fuzes come first!’ At the same time, pens such as this became central to the war narrative: writing and receiving letters were essential for morale; people were encouraged to gift pens and to engage in written correspondence with soldiers.

After the German surrender was signed, indeed, with a Parker 51 pen, the end of the war led to resuming manufacturing, the multiplication of many parts and designs, and an overall transformation of the symbolic value of giving and receiving a pen. Once a token of affection for a son or a lover fighting far away, pens now turned into markers of economic rebirth, accessories for people of various classes and genders claiming a new place in society, and also as corporate gifts for growing industries in an increasingly industrialised world.

Ironically, 1955, the year when this particular pen was used, actually marked the Parker 51’s decline. The first Parker ballpoint pen was introduced in England that year, following other brands that had gradually entered the market since the 1940s. By the 1970s, the production of the legendary Parker 51 pen was interrupted though later replicas were introduced later and a niche fountain pen market remains.

Part of that aura derived from the fact that famous people ostensibly used them, most notably the Royal family. The Queen Mother wielded a Parker 51, as did young Princess Elizabeth. Queen Elisabeth would later give a Royal Warrant to Parker in 1962, and the then Prince Charles would do the same in 1992. Neither the late Queen nor the current King were ever exclusive users, but clearly they contributed to give Parker 51 its mystique. They often chose it as a token of their feelings, a symbol of their presence, and as a means to communicate something more.

Queen Elizabeth’s Parker 51 pen and her 1955 visit for the inauguration of the Main Building

The Court Circular for the 1955 visit details the royal itinerary for that day: first Bourneville, then King Edward’s School, the College of Technology what would later become Aston University) and, in the afternoon, All Saints Church in Shard End. This was the first visit of the young Queen to Birmingham since her coronation, the first engagement of the young couple there, one of the reasons why 10,000 people crowded Victoria Square to see them go by, and more lined the streets.

‘For one day the city did not seem as drab’, many would remark in retrospect. And drab it was indeed. Many parts had yet to be rebuilt after wartime bombings, rationing had just ended, and a broad spectrum of ongoing economic and social problems surrounded this piece of news. But there were also progress, machines, devices, and training for building a workforce capable of using them promised a better future.

A newsreel from British Pathé conveys the excitement of that day.

To be sure, one might dismiss this whole episode as a few minutes of royal glitz, a distraction that deflected light away from reality for a day, way back in 1955. Yet, it is significant that in grim times people reached for something that was at once practical, tangible, and concrete, but also well-made, evocative, and optimistic. They did not fall into mere functionalism; instead, they combined practicality with symbolism to say something new, innovative, and ambitious. They understood that the Queen could elevate a pen, or a new building, into something higher, not for sale. They changed the meaning of what it meant to be ‘fit for a Queen’, seeing her as a young, global icon who might unite people in a fast-changing world and institution. It was a deliberate and defined strategic decision to grow by leveraging tradition, the past, what had been, to be forward looking.

Of course, many of those visions and promises never came to fruition quite in the way in which people had envisioned, no more than a pen or a letter alone ever sufficed to make a real difference in any person’s life. But symbols matter, as the ideals they represent often moved and still move people to action. Their being unnecessary, made the necessary possible. Their presence high up, made the direction clear. And for the College the direction was clear.

The following year, in 1956, the same institution would become a College of Advanced Technology. In 1963, the Robbins Report would establish that education ‘should be available to all qualified by ability and attainment’. Its purpose should be not only to impart skills but also to create ‘cultivated men and women’, and to promote ‘balance in research and teaching’ in order ‘to transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship’. As a consequence of this report, Queen Elizabeth would give its charter to Aston University in 1966. This pen embodies the trajectory that led to that point and charted the course of the institution’s development to this day.

Queen Elizabeth’s pen, History, and the Aston University Archives

Queen Elizabeth’s Parker 51 pen was long cared for by Chief Executive of Aston University and Professor of Higher Education Learning and Management and Associate Dean of Aston Business School, Helen Higson. With the establishment of the History Programme in 2018 and its development into a full-fledged degree that emphasizes archival skills, new attention has been devoted to the history of the institution and to the archival materials and objects that document it. The History section also established and cares for the Aston University Archives and continuously organises events and displays related to the history of the institution, city, and region often placing them in a global context.

Collection Conversations

A Tale of Register and Programme

---

Collection Conversations #2: Alternative Futures: A 1964 Newspaper Article, College and Senate Minutes, and Decades, worth of Press Cuttings.

---

Collection Conversations #3 of 1980s glossy magazines and brochures

---

Collection Conversations #4 The 1895 Programme and Prize Day Speech

 

Stories from Aston University Archives

Inventing the Future: An Aston Archive Story

In Memoriam

Colin Gilmore

We have been informed of the death of Colin Gilmore who was a lecturer in Accounting at Aston Business School from 1976 to 1999. He was a very much-admired lecturer and a very supportive Programme Director for the BSc International Business and Modern Languages for many years. He was also an excellent cook and a friend to many.

Colin went to school at Wolverhampton Grammar School and then studied at Exeter College, Oxford.

After retirement he moved to Gunnislake in Cornwall, where he spent a very contented 15 years with his second wife Kathy. He reached the age of 86 in October but also became very frail with kidney and mobility problems. He passed away a few days ago after a long spell in the hospital.

Dr Shelia Handley

It is with sadness that I recently learnt of the death of Dr Sheila Handley, a senior lecturer in pharmacology at the time of her retirement from Aston around 20 years ago.

Sheila did a pharmacy degree at the School of Pharmacy in London, where amongst others, she was taught by Mike Brown, who was later her Head of Department at Aston. She did have some stories of those days to share... Sheila followed a career in research, specialising in behavioural pharmacology and for many years ploughed a lone furrow at Aston as a neuropharmacologist. She began her research at Allen and Hanbury’s neuropharmacology research group working under Paul Spencer and when he came to Aston in 1966 as head of Pharmacology, he recruited Sheila as a junior lecturer.

Sheila was much respected in her field, being particularly interested in how metabolites of tryptyophan and imadazoline influenced behaviour. For many years she kept the discipline of neuropharmacology alive at Aston until new appointments in the 1990s. I suspect that today she would have been awarded a chair; she had in excess of 100 publications. None-the-less, Sheila did not shrink her duty and was acting head of pharmacology from the retirement of Professor Brian Ferry to the appointment of Professor Ian Martin.

Sheila showed me much kindness when I arrived at Aston and gave me my first experience of examining a PhD. She also provided sound advice. She enjoyed the banter of the lab, giving as good as she got and was loyal to her colleagues. I remember particularly her delight when a member of staff in another school, assuming she was male, accused her of sexism; the individual was never quite the same again... Outside of work her passion was her horse; she was an accomplished rider. I remember her fondly. David Poyner (with thanks to Professor Keith Wilson for help with this tribute).

Dr Gloria Lee

Dr Lee was a ground-breaking academic at Aston and in the UK, not least because she was in those times very often the only senior woman in the room.

Gloria was an important part of what became known as The Aston Approach,and helped to make “The Aston Studies” (a programme of research which looked at the structures of organisations within their context (e.g. technology, size, dependence), significant on the international map. Indeed, she led what came to be regarded as the fourth generation of this work.

Dr Lee’s work was strongly in the Aston University tradition, looking at innovation, technology, and management. Her studies included one from 1977 which revealed that immigrants are no more accident prone than other workers, and her contribution to an Aston-authored 1991 book on Achieving a competitive edge through Technology and People was entitled Technology and the Drive for Quality: A study of survival in the foundry industry. Gloria’s work on Technology Transfer, helped create a platform to an area in which Aston University is still a leader.

She has a passionate advocate of both research and executive education, and as a member of the Business School Executive led from the front both research and education initiatives, including introducing one of the first distance-learning MBAs. She became a renowned authority on this kind of education, publishing her article on Distance Learning MBAs: Issues and Opportunities in 1988. Dr Lee was an important member of the Business School senior leadership team.

Gloria had a rich and rewarding family life and many Aston colleagues during her time here benefitted from her hospitality, including on the family narrowboat.

Ian Martin

Dr. Ian Martin, Emeritus Professor, Aston University, Birmingham, U.K. died in Cambridge on September 11, 2024. He was 80 years old.

It is conventional to start an obituary of a significant scientific figure, such as Ian, with an outline of his career and his achievements. This obituary does of course cover this. However, as friends of Ian, we have chosen to begin with an anecdote which we think captures much of the spirit and genius of the man.

It was 1990, the coffee room in the MRC Molecular Neurobiology Unit in Cambridge. With a colleague, now an FRS, one of us (DRP) was looking blankly at data on the iron-binding affinities for a series of ligands. Ian walked in and greeted us with a smile; “Haven’t you boys sorted that trivial little problem yet?”. The trivial problem had stymied us for several weeks. Ian listened to us, looked at the data, drew heavily on his pipe and then queried “Isn’t it obvious?”. He gently explained to us what a stability constant was, drawing on his training as a chemist, and described what it implied for our work. Our eyes were opened; the data now made sense and a paper eventually resulted. We asked Ian if he wanted to be an author. Of course he declined; it was reward enough for him that he had been able to help us. This incident could be multiplied many fold over Ian’s working life. A distinguished scientist in his own right, he helped and mentored all those who worked around him with his kindness, wisdom and gentle support.

Ian was born and raised in Stockport, England. After obtaining his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Bristol, he worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 3 years with Pfizer in Sandwich, Kent. He joined the MRC Neuropharmacology Unit at the University of Birmingham in 1969 and while there completed his PhD. In 1980, he joined the MRC Neurochemical Pharmacology Unit (later named the MRC Molecular Neurobiology Unit) in Cambridge as an MRC Scientist and was subsequently promoted to MRC Senior Scientist. In 1992, Ian moved to the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada as Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology. After serving 5 years in that position, he moved back to England, taking up a position as Professor and Head of Pharmacology in the Pharmacy School, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at Aston University in Birmingham. He became an Emeritus Professor upon his retirement from Aston in 2009 and moved to Wicken, Cambridgeshire. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society in 2010 for his contributions to the discipline.

Ian was well known internationally for his elegant research on the structure and function of receptors involved in anxiety disorders, particularly for his work on benzodiazepines and the GABA-A receptor. This expanded latterly to cover a range of ligand-gated ion channels. Due to his expertise and enthusiasm, he established productive collaborations with scientists not only in the United Kingdom but in several other countries. His papers drew variously on classical pharmacology, electrophysiology, behavioural models, protein chemistry and molecular, structural and computational biology. A talented educator and administrator, he was respected widely by trainees and peers alike for his common sense, approachable manner and great sense of humour. He took a deep interest in the training of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and many of them became his lifelong friends. His favourite sayings (for example, “The data do not lie” and “Two things float to the top and only one of them is cream”) remain cherished by those who heard them. His care for his colleagues was exemplary; he would fight for all he was worth to defend their interests when that was necessary. For those in pressing need, he and Alison would offer themselves unstintingly to give them space to recover.

A funeral service for Ian was held in Cambridge on October 3, 2024 and was attended by family and many former friends and colleagues in person or online. Ian is survived by Alison, his loving wife of 58 years, and by his daughter Anna (James Kirkup), son Andrew (Andrea) and grandchildren William, Annika and Henry.

Glen Baker (University of Alberta) and David Poyner (Aston University).

Jim Shields - 1957-2023

It is with great sadness that colleagues learned in 2023 of the death of Jim Shields, formerly Professor of French Politics and Modern History (2010-2018) at Aston University (Birmingham, UK). He served as Head of French in the Department of Languages and Translation Studies in what was then the School of Languages and Social Sciences. Jim had a long relationship with Aston, having been first appointed Lecturer in French in 1984. It was during that early period that he set aside the literary interests that had led him to write his doctoral thesis on the French novelist Stendhal and turn to the study of the French National Front party, which had its own breakthrough moment in the European elections of 1984.

Jim’s career path then took him to University of Warwick in April 1990 where he held posts as Senior Lecturer and Reader. His genial courses on French politics, political parties, elections, and psephology (a word Jim loved) were enthusiastically attended by several generations of Warwick undergraduates. Jim was a gifted teacher and a warm supporter of junior researchers (such as myself when our paths first crossed in 2003). His commitment to pastoral matters is illustrated by his long service as Warden of Tocil Residence while at Warwick. Tributes from former students poured in following his death.

Jim released his monograph The Extreme Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen with Routledge in 2007. He edited two further collections of studies and since 2000 had authored more than twenty articles or book chapters. During a long and distinguished career, he was elected to the Academy of Social Sciences, the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts, and his research was funded by the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Nuffield Foundation. During the last year of his professorship at Aston (2017-18), he held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for a project entitled ‘How Extremists Govern: Lessons from France’. He had earlier been awarded the distinguished Stanley Hoffmann Prize (2007) by the Political Science Association in recognition of his essay ‘Political Representation in France: A Crisis of Democracy?’ (2006), judged the best anglophone essay on French politics that year (from a pool of 233 articles). The jury was chaired by Hoffmann himself, and it was a matter of enduring pride to Jim to have had his scholarship recognised by one of the great figures of contemporary French political science. Jim later served on the AHRC Peer Review College and as a consultant for various associations, but he still graciously submitted to the internal review of his own grant applications by junior colleagues.

Like many brilliant scholars, Jim was a complex individual with a rich array of hidden talents (Spanish and Portuguese were among his other languages) and a varied hinterland. He was a sportsman and amateur footballer, enjoying regular Celtic banter with his last doctoral student Dr Chris O’Neill, a fellow Glaswegian and enthusiast for the history of the Vichy Regime and the German occupation (1940-1944). In his rarely varying outfit of cream-coloured linen jacket, Jim would welcome visitors to his office with a warm ‘Cher ami’ in a deep Scottish brogue. If he was on campus but out of the office, Jim would leave that cream jacket on the back of his chair to let people know he was around and available. Students came often and benefitted greatly from his erudition and kindly tolerance (a quality less available in the face of administrative overreach).

Jim took early retirement in 2018. What he did not disclose to colleagues at the time was that he had already been fighting an aggressive cancer for twenty-five years. He was thus able to spend his final years with his family in Bristol: his wife Dr Britta Shields-Martens (UWE), and son Alex and daughter Lena of whom he was so prodigiously proud. Nevertheless, during that period he kept up for some time his appearances in the media which had become legion during his tenure at Aston and were worth the equivalent of several million pounds in advertising investment. Jim was a regular guest on BBC World, BBC News, France 24 News, TRT World and other news channels where his insightful commentary and easy manner were greatly valued by newscasters.

He was appointed Honorary Professor of French Studies at Warwick in 2018.

James Shields, 23 February 1957 – 9 February 2023.

 

Aston Archive images, reflecting Queen Elizabeth's pen, History and the Aston University Archives.