What is the Mass Observation Archive?

What is the Mass Observation Archive?

What is the Mass Observation Archive?

The Mass Observation Archive (MOA) was founded in 1937 by three young men who aimed to create an 'anthropology of ourselves'. They recruited a team of observers and a large group of volunteer writers to document the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. This recording of domestic, working and personal life on the home front gained important ground during the war and post-war years, and continued in its original form until the early 1950s.

In 1970, the Archive came to the University of Sussex and was opened up as a public resource for historical research. The Archive holds all the material generated by Mass Observation between 1937 and 1949, with a few later additions from the 1950s and 1960s.

The original Mass Observation idea of a national panel was revived by the Archive in 1981. Through the press, television and radio, new volunteer writers or 'Mass Observation correspondents' were recruited from all over Britain. The project continues under the direction of Dorothy Sheridan.