Dr Andrew Perchard (Department of Strategy and Organisation) was recently awarded the Betty Sams Christian/ Mellon Fellowship from the Virginia Historical Society. This prestigious award allowed Dr Perchard to undertake a research trip to the Reynolds Business History Center in Richmond, Virginia, to examine the records of one of the US's largest aluminium concerns, the Reynolds Metals Company, (until their takeover by the Aluminum Company of America) earlier this summer.
With additional financial support from the Institut pour l'histoire de l'aluminium in Paris, and SBS, Dr Perchard was also able to include a visit to the Library of Congress in Washington DC to explore the personal archives of a number of key Washington lobbyists and prominent US politicians with links to industry. This research forms part of a larger transnational programme of research being undertaken by Dr Perchard into business-government relations and broader corporate political activity in Canada, the UK and US. This builds on earlier research visits to Canadian and US archives, funded by the British Association for Canadian Studies and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, as well as Dr Perchard's 2012 book on the UK aluminium industry, Aluminiumville: Government, Global Business & the Scottish Highlands.
It also ties in with the work of the international research network and programme established by Dr Perchard, along with colleagues from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the History and Strategic Raw Materials Initiative (HSRMI). HSRMI held its second annual conference at the Scottish Universities Insight Institute in late June, following on from an inaugural conference at Harvard Business School in June 2012, the subject of a forthcoming book – History of the Global Tin Industry - in the Routledge International Studies in Business History collection.
The Fellowship also ties in with papers Dr Perchard gave to a symposium in Trondheim, and his participation as part of a panel at the European Business History Association conference in Uppsala, on regulation of natural resources (August 21-23). Attendance at these events was funded by the Research Council of Norway and the Centre for Business History in Scotland, University of Glasgow.