This Leverhulme-funded project ran from May 2008 to October 2011 and examined the history of NGOs in Britain since 1945.

The project provided an overview of the NGO sector in late 20th century Britain, and addressed questions regarding the specific dynamics of NGO influence within three key sectors (international aid and development, environmentalism and homelessness) and evaluated the main characteristics of each sector, and its socio-political influence. It also offered insight into the power of NGOs, not simply in terms of how they influenced legislative change, but also as forces that impacted upon the way society perceived itself, conceptualised its problems, and selected the solutions with which to address them. Finally, it analysed the great themes related to NGOs: professionalisation; secularisation; identity politics and the equality agenda; democracy; the role of government; and citizenship.

Though the project has concluded, this website contains information about our research and publications, the principal output of which was the book The Politics of Expertise: How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain (OUP, 2013). It also provides access to our sister project, Database of Archives of Non-Governmental Organisations (DANGO).