I first started writing academic papers as part of my PhD study, and this particular paper entitled ‘Freemasonry, industry and charity: the local community and the working man‘ was my first published academic paper which appeared in The Journal of the Institute of Volunteering Research, Volume 5, Number 1, (2002), pp.33-45. The paper had been presented at the Conference on the History of Voluntary Action at the University of Liverpool, on the 11th of September, 2001.

The paper can be downloaded free from the link above which leads to academia.edu, an academic site run for the purpose of research in academic study. The paper examines how Freemasonry played a role in the developing industrial landscape of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, arguing that charity was part of the Masonic framework during a period when working men were members of certain lodges in industrial areas.

I will be posting more links to the site soon so my papers can be freely accessed.