There is a growing trend across the social sciences to engage with archives. Within human geography, this has stimulated a debate about the nature of archives, including moving from considering "archive as source" to "archive as subject." We build on and extend this thinking, suggesting that an even more active appreciation of the dynamic nature of relationships between researchers, owners of records, and archival material is needed. This paper draws on an interdisciplinary study of voluntary action and welfare provision in England in the 1940s and 2010s to highlight how the different iterative processes involved in collaborative archival research are part of what we call co-curation. Co-curation involves the negotiated identification, selection, preparation, and interpretation of archival materials. This has implications for both research processes and outcomes.

There is a growing trend across the social sciences to engage with archives. Within human geography, this has stimulated a debate about the nature of archives, including moving from considering ‘archive as source’ to ‘archive as subject.’ We build on and extend this thinking, suggesting that an even more active appreciation of the dynamic nature of relationships between researchers, owners of records, and archival material is needed. This paper draws on an interdisciplinary study of voluntary action and welfare provision in England in the 1940s and 2010s to highlight how the different iterative processes involved in collaborative archival research are part of what we call co-curation. Co-curation involves the negotiated identification, selection, preparation, and interpretation of archival materials. This has implications for both research processes and outcomes.

As a result of COVID-19, civil society infrastructure -the structures and systems for supporting civil society -appears to have become fashionable again after years of neglect.This article examines five recent 'episodes' which together might signal the beginnings of a surprising turn in the way civil society infrastructure in England is discussed, and its role recognised and valued.In the decade before COVID-19, a great deal of civil society infrastructure had been dismantled following disinvestment and disenchantment in policy and practice, creating a fragmented landscape of provision.During the pandemic, however, it has experienced something of a renaissance, at least in terms of national debate and developments.The article seeks to place this potential shift in historical context and begins to trace lines of connection through recent developments.It concludes by contrasting two visions for how civil society infrastructure should be organised, suggesting tentative counter-currents to a decade-long project of dis-coordinating civil society infrastructure.

The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly become a multifaceted global crisis, disrupting economies, livelihoods and ways of life, with significant ramifications for the third sector. This paper seeks to prompt a conversation about third sector research agendas, which might be animated in and beyond coronavirus, focusing primarily on the experience of the sector in the UK but including references globally. After a brief discussion of the acute three-dimensional crisis facing the sector, the paper raises questions for now and later at three interconnected levels: of practice, organisation and society. The paper concludes with a call for critically engaged curiosity about the role and fortunes of the third sector in a time of lockdown and its aftermath.

Regarded by commentators as an emollient to soothe critics of the part privatisation of the public probation service, the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms in England and Wales promised an enlarged role for the voluntary sector in the resettlement and rehabilitation of offenders. Whether such changes mark a decisive turning point or in the fullness of time represent just another twist in the long and messy narrative of voluntary sector provision of offender services remains an open question. This chapter will examine the role and fortunes of the sector during the tumultuous period between 2014 and 2019 and identify what lessons can be learnt for the future.

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In the context of a mixed economy of welfare, public policy in the UK and elsewhere has long promoted third sector involvement in delivering public services. A growing research literature consistently highlights the challenges third sector organisations face engaging with a demanding public services commissioning environment, but it tends to lack a theoretical basis and can offer misleading accounts of third sector organisations as relatively passive and powerless in the face of wider forces. This article argues that third sector organisations actively operate within and seek to shape a commissioning context which advantages some strategies and some types of organisation over others. To provide stronger theoretical foundations for understanding public services commissioning and the third sector, the concept of 'strategic selectivity' (Hay, 2002) is applied to in-depth qualitative longitudinal data from third sector organisations delivering a range of public services. The article contributes new theoretical insights into the dynamic ways in which social policies and public services are organised. The analysis highlights how differently positioned organisations seek to read, navigate pathways through, and transform an uneven public services commissioning landscape.