The latest collection to join our unique corpus of asbestos-related materials is the Michael Brazier papers on asbestos and the asbestos industry. 

Our asbestos collections provide first-hand evidence of the fight to gain scientific acceptance of the lethal effects of exposure to asbestos, the international campaigns to ban the substance, and efforts to get compensation for the victims of asbestos-related disease. 

These papers, gifted to the University by the son of Michael Brazier this year, are fascinating in that they document the asbestos debate from the point of view of an asbestos company. 

Michael Brazier was the grandson of Albert Alfred Brazier, the founder of A.A. Brazier & Co. This company was started in the 1920s as a UK distribution arm of the Johnsons Asbestos Company, which was based in Thetford Mines, Quebec. Michael started in the late 1940s learning the asbestos trade, became a company director and then eventually took over as managing director from his father, Wilfred Sydney Brazier.

Michael was passionate in his interest in all the aspects of the asbestos debate, and he was part of the industry delegation to the parliamentary Advisory Committee on Asbestos in 1976-77. Over decades, he carefully collected reports, documents, and publications relating to the asbestos health debate, from the perspective of the asbestos industry. He was particularly interested in whether all forms of asbestos were as dangerous to health.

A collection-level description is available on our online catalogue, including the option to download a detailed box-list for the collection.

Further information

• Collection catalogue: Michael Brazier papers on asbestos and the asbestos industry
• Asbestos-related collections resource guide

(Image credit: Letterhead from A.A. Brazier, Acc 2065: Box 6)

We are thrilled to share the news Eleanor Bell has been awarded a Catalyst Award grant by the AHRC to deliver the Archie Hind Centenary Project! 

This grant will be supporting the cataloguing, digitisation, research into, and engagement with the Archie Hind papers as well as new oral history interviews with those who knew Archie. Detailed cataloguing and digitisation will open up this collection that was previously thought lost. Eleanor will study the papers and discover more about Archie Hind’s creative process, uncover his unpublished writings, and trace his wider literary and social networks. This ground-breaking project will add new knowledge to the field of Scottish Literature and make the collection available for generations of researchers to come. 

We are very excited to begin the project, with Eleanor, in 2026. The activities will lead us into the centenary of Archie Hind’s birth in 2028 where the outcomes can all be celebrated in style. 

Eleanor reflected: 

‘I’m delighted to have received this AHRC Catalyst funding and very much look forward to collaborating with Archives & Special Collections over the next few years in order to fully explore and unlock the potential of the Archie Hind Papers.’

Congratulations to Eleanor on securing one of the most prestigious and competitive funding awards in the in the UK!

Find out more about the Archie Hind Centenary project:

• The discovery of the Archie Hind papers.
• Archie Hind Project blog-posts. 

[image credits: Eleanor Bell and the collection]

Eleanor Bell and Rachael Jones were delighted to attend a Glasgow850 celebration last month. “Archie Hind and Dalmarnock Power Station”, a portrait painted by Alasdair Gray, was brought out of storage and installed on the ground floor of the City Chambers. 

Painted in 1977, Dalmarnock Power station was once a symbol of Glasgow’s industrial might and provides a fitting backdrop for the author of The Dear Green Place. The painting is one of a series of 30 paintings by Gray that record Glasgow and its citizens: an initiative by Elspeth King from the People’s Palace. 

The installation at the City Chambers also includes artworks by pupils from St Mungo’s Academy that were inspired by the Gray portrait. 

Find out more on the Glasgow850 news site.

All visitors can view the painting until 3 November 2025.

Find our Archie Hind updates by searching our blog-site for ‘Hind’.

Featured image courtesy of Glasgow City Chambers. From left to right: Sorcha Dallas, curator of The Alasdair Gray Archive; Dr Eleanor Bell, Postgraduate Research Director for the Department of Humanities; Lord Provost of Glasgow Jacqueline McLaren; Sheila Hind, daughter of Archie Hind; Rachael Jones, Assistant Archivist.

We are delighted to share a new catalogue for one of our oral history collections. 

You can browse descriptions of interviews, by James Ferns, with 51 people who worked in the steel and shipbuilding industries before being made redundant in the 1980s and the 1990s. 

Themes explored during the interviews include: 

• the working conditions within heavy industry roles, the camaraderie, masculinity, and (lack of) health and safety 
• the importance and activities of trade unions in these industries and how this compared with non-industrial settings 
• how workers adapted to new working environments after being made redundant
• unemployment and working identities

If you would like to hear (or read the summaries/transcripts of) these stories from a significant time in Britain’s social and working history, please contact us to request access. 

Explore the Heavy Industry, deindustrialisation and workers’ post-redundancy employment experiences oral history project catalogue

Feature image: MV ‘GEM’, 1969 (T-GEM 3/3) 

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the catalogue for the papers of prolific ban asbestos campaigner Laurie Kazan-Allen. 

This opens up over 75 archive boxes of materials to all researchers. 

Laurie Kazan-Allen is a hugely significant figure in the ban asbestos movement. She spent over 30 years researching, writing about and campaigning internationally to eradicate the asbestos hazard. In 1990, she was founding editor of the British Asbestos Newsletter: a quarterly publication distributed worldwide to solicitors, victim support groups, academics, medical personnel and research bodies. 

The British Asbestos Newsletter (BAN) was a vital tool to share information about asbestos, its effects and the plight of victims of the deadly substance, particularly in the days before the World Wide Web was at its height. At that time asbestos information was in the hands of multinational corporations, government agencies and other vested interests, most of whom were determined to keep tight control over key documents and information.

Kazan-Allen was also the founder and coordinator of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS), established in 1999 to work towards a global asbestos ban and to support victims of asbestos-related diseases. From the very beginning, IBAS made common cause with trade unions, labour federations, environmental campaigns, human rights organisations and other like-minded civil society groups. The links forged were vital for progressing the international coalition which motivated and sustained  all IBAS activities.

The bulk of the collection is material gathered by Kazan-Allen on various aspects of asbestos, its uses, dangers and effects. Journal articles, correspondence, reports, newspaper clippings, case documentation, leaflets and statistics have all been filed under thematic headings including: countries; international agencies; asbestos companies; scientific and medical developments; legal cases; individuals involved in historical and scientific research; and others.

Laurie Kazan-Allen used these research files to write articles, speeches, and reports which are also represented within the collection and on the website of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat.

This collection joins our growing and popular corpus of asbestos-related materials: some of our most frequently consulted collections. We look forward to welcoming researchers to access this new and important collection. 

Asked for her comments on the launch of the on-line catalogue, Kazan-Allen said:

Further information:

• Catalogue for Laurie Kazan-Allen papers on asbestos
• Resource guide for asbestos collections
• International Ban Asbestos Secretariat website

Contact us to make an appointment or enquire about the collection.

Feature image: Ban asbestos campaign badges (LKA/6/11)

Fifty years ago Glasgow based Strathclyde Theatre Group created a landmark theatrical production which is to be celebrated this year with an exhibition at the Edinburgh Festival.

Archives and Special Collections hold the archive of the Strathclyde Theatre Group. Copies of items from The Golden City production files feature in the Edinburgh exhibition to tell its story. Originals can be seen in our latest archive exhibition on level 3 of the library.

Strathclyde Theatre Group was an initiative of the Department of English Studies and more broadly the University of Strathclyde; it was active from the 1970s until the early 2000s. 
The archive collection includes: posters; leaflets; production photographs; scripts; and correspondence and covers productions dating from 1969 – 2009.

The anniversary exhibition in Edinburgh will be open from 1-31 August 2024 in St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Palmerston Place, Edinburgh - the venue for the original production's Edinburgh run.

Discover more information about the exhibition and the celebrations on the Golden City 50 Exhibition website.