Michael Anderson OBE, MA, PhD, Dr H.C., FBA, FRSE, FrHist Soc, HonFFA
Professor Emeritus in History
Room 1M.30, William Robertson Wing, Old Medical School, Teviot Place
Telephone: 0131 650 4140Other affiliated schools
SPSBiography
I read Modern Languages and Economics and Politics (including sociology and economic history) in Cambridge, then did a PhD there on the impact of industrialisation on the family in Lancashire. I was appointed as Assistant Lecturer in Sociology 1967, then Lecturer in 1969, and Reader 1975, before becoming Professor of Economic History in 1979. Over the next 28 years I taught a wide range of courses in economic, social and population history and also since 2000 I have taught on a course on Research Design for graduate students in the School of Social and Political Studies. I have done and supervised research into many aspects of family and population history as well as on the sociology of the household economy and of the family more widely. From 1985 until I retired from full-time employment in 2007, I held a series of senior management roles, ending as Senior Vice-Principal of the University for 2000-2007.
Over many years, I served on research committees and the councils of many research bodies, including ESRC, the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and I have also been heavily involved in UK research library policy, serving nine years on the Board of the British Library and since 2000 as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Library of Scotland. I have also served on many research programme or policy advisory boards.
External appointments
Board of Trustees of the National Library of Scotland (chairman)
National Statistics Centre for Demography Advisory Board (member)
Research Information Network Advisory Board (member and chair of humanities and social sciences sub-committee)
Steering Committee for the Scottish 2011 Census (member. formally ‘representing the interests of historians of 2111’)
ESRC Centre for Population Change Advisory Board (member)
ESRC Integration of Census Microdata Advisory Board (member)