The Open University’s Biographical Methodologies research group operated from 2006 to 2012. It brought together academics from across the University (and particularly from the Faculties of Arts and of Health and Social Care) who routinely employ biographical sources and have made them the focus of specific reflection. Researchers within the History Department were engaged in projects investigating a wide range of questions: biographies and autobiographies as a resource for research and as a genre; collective biographies; the relations between biographies and prosopography; biography and identity. Research topics were equally broad both chronologically—from biographical accounts of medieval queens to those of early 20th-century chemists—and geographically—from Britain to continental Europe and South East Asia.
The group has recently been wound up as members have retired or moved on to new projects, but some are still active on related projects.