The Return of the Armchair Scholar

Abstract

The foundations for the eventual professionalization of social science disciplines can be traced to ‘armchair scholars’ of the nineteenth century. These were amateur researchers who, thanks to financial resources and leisure time, could pursue their academic interests from the comforts of home. In the twenty-first century, with the development of digitization and the numerous online full-text databases, the possibility of researching from home once again exists. The amateur has always played a role in contributing to scholarship, and, with the development of the Internet, the possibilities are limitless for the twenty-first-century ‘armchair scholar.’