Paul Merchant

Paul Merchant is an oral historian and reseacher at National Life Stories, The British Library. He is currently working on a major project entitled 'An oral history of farming, land management and conservation in post-war Britain'. This project is recording life story interviews with farmers, scientists, landowners, policy-makers and others involved in the transformation of agriculture and the management and conservation of the countryside in Britain since 1945.

Paul has worked on other National Life Stories projects, including An Oral History of British Science in which he focused on oral histories of geophysics, glaciology and climate science (see https://www.bl.uk/voices-of-science). He has a background in cultural geography and his published work is concerned with the recent history of earth and environmental sciences, the role of oral history in the history of science, and relations between science, religion and popular science.