Academic Book Week, Monday March 9th - Friday March 13th
Next week is Academic Book Week, an event launched in 2015, as an annual, five-day celebration of the diversity, innovation and influence of academic books. Initiated by staff at UCL as part of the AHRC/ British Library Academic Book of the Future Project, it has since been adopted and run by the Booksellers Association. UCL are proud to be one of the co-sponsors of the week.
From debates, workshops and seminars to exhibitions and competitions, Academic Book Week aims to open up a dialogue between the makers, providers and readers of academic books, and to increase awareness of the academic book, alerting policy-makers to its importance as part of the intellectual ecosystem of the UK. This year’s campaign theme is “Academic Books and the Environment”.
Samantha Rayner Director of the Centre for Publishing at UCL, and the founder of Academic Book Week, spoke of its importance – and increasing relevance:
“There is so much debate about the way academic work should be published and disseminated at present, that having a week of focussed activity exploring how readers and researchers are responding to this is a valuable way to access what communities outside of academia think about it all. Academic Book Week asks us to think about what an academic book is, where it should be available, and in what format: with significant changes to policy around these questions taking place, it has never been more important to understand the contexts in which research is published and disseminated. “
Sam is also speaking at one of the headline Academic Book Week events – a seminar at the London Book Fair on students as book buyers. Find out more. You can see more about all events planned here.
During the week of the 9th make sure you follow @AcBookWeek and #AcademicBookWeek on social media platforms. Of particular relevance to UCL during the week will be:
- @UCLPress – where we will be tweeting a range of content from our authors around the importance of academic bookshops, and other platforms to disseminate research. In addition there will be links to free content from our books with an environmental theme.
- @UCLPublishing – for lots of news from the London Book Fair and debate around academic books and the book trade.
You can find out much more about Academic Book Week here.