Kate Adie OBE grew up in Sunderland and later became Chief News Correspondent at the BBC.
"The city has a wonderful history and growing up in cities like Sunderland does shape you, it makes you the person you are. Sunderland shaped me. It is all to do with where I come from, and I feel very strongly about that." Kate Adie, 2024
Kate's collection relates to her professional life, documenting a trailblazing broadcast journalism career covering major world events and reporting from war and combat zones including the Gulf and the former Yugoslavia. Kate's reasons for depositing her archive with the University of Sunderland are to preserve a record of her professional career and to promote scholarship and research within the humanities and social sciences.
The collection is a unique archive of documents, reporters notebooks, photographs, BBC news clips and artefacts relating to Kate's career and placed on indefinite loan with the University Library. Kate continues to add material to the collection.
Kate's published works include: The Kindness of Strangers, Corsets to Camouflage, Into Danger and Nobody's Child
Kate maintains connections with Sunderland, referencing the city throughout her books. Kate holds honorary degrees from a number of universities and is Honorary Professor of Journalism at the University of Sunderland. She was awarded an OBE in 1993 and won the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA in 1990.
The University has recently been awarded grant funding from Archives Revealed to continue cataloguing the collection. This is an exciting opportunity to open the collection for wider and more inclusive engagement and interest, within a University of Sunderland teaching, learning and research and also locally and nationally.
The North of England Mining Archive and Research Centre (NEEMARC) is a collection of unique and historical records from The National Union of Mineworkers Durham Area (NUM), The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (NEIMME) and the Durham branch of The National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS).
In 2007 a Heritage Lottery Fund award of £270,000 was granted to set up an archive centre at the University of Sunderland's Murray Library (now Murray Health Building). The main aim of the project is to preserve and catalogue the primary archival material within the NEEMARC collections and to make the items accessible to a wide range of users.
Donated by Lord Puttnam of Queensgate in 2016, this unique archive comprises a range of material relating mainly to his work in the field of education. The material includes diaries, letters, speeches and articles written by Lord Puttnam from the 1980s to 2013.
Lord Puttnam began his career in advertising and then turned to fim production in the late 1960s and produced films such as the rock musicals That'll Be The Day (1973) and Stardust (1974), Ken Russell's Mahler (1974) and Lisztomania (1975), and Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone (1976). In 1978 he also produced Alan Parker's Midnight Express.
In 1976, he set up his own production company, Enigma Productions, through which he produced a string of films, such as The Duellists (Ridley Scott's feature film debut), Chariots of Fire (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1982), Local Hero, Memphis Belle, Meeting Venus and The Killing Fields, and The Mission with Roland Joffe (which win the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986). Lord Puttnam was chairman and CEO of Columbia Pictures from June 1986 until September 1987.
Lord Puttnam retired from film production in 1998 to focus on his work in public policy as it relates to education, the environment and the creative and communications industries. Lord Puttnam was the first Chancellor of the University of Sunderland from 1997 until July 2007.
Sidney Pollard Collection
Sidney Pollard (1925-1998) was an economic and social historian who commanded an international reputation. His papers are held in Special Collections and his books are held by the within library collections and are listed in the Library Search. These books can be requested at the library help desk - please allow at least one working day for them to be retrieved and available for viewing. Please note these books are for reference only and must be used within the library.
If you wish to use this archive collection for research, please contact us via Library Talk or email specialcollections@sunderland.ac.uk so that we can discuss your research needs and request permission from the literary executors.
Quaker Book Collection
The Quaker book Collection consists of the collection of John Ormerod Greenwood, and books donated by Quaker Meeting Houses.
John Ormerod Greenwood, born in 1907, was an actor, playwright and producer, as well as a Quaker historian who completed a three volume series about Friends' international work, called 'Quaker Encounters'.
He gave the 1978 Swarthmore lecture 'Signs of Life, Art and Religious Experience', setting out to address the way in which God can be discovered in and through the arts.
The book collection held in Special Collections includes books by and about Quakers, printed copies of spiritual journals and sufferings, copies of many Swarthmore lectures given between 1909 and 1959, reports of Quaker meetings and conferences, and copies of Quaker periodicals (incomplete runs) as follows:
The Friend (between 1838 and 1949)
The British Friend (between 1852 and 1888).
The Irish Friend (between 1837 and 1842).
The Journal of the Friends' Historical Society (between 1903 and 1986).
Sidney Pollard Collection
Quaker Book Collection