Stuart Jones is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Manchester. He is a specialist in nineteenth-century intellectual history and political thought, and his books include Victorian Political Thought and Intellect and Character in Victorian England.

• Editor’s Introduction - Stuart JonesPart I: Academy and community in the nineteeth-century city - Stuart Jones1 The mechanics’ institutes and the spread of ‘useful knowledge’ – Joanna BourkeVignette 1: The founders of the Manchester Mechanics’ Institution – Natalie Zacek2 Heidelberg in Cottonopolis: how Roscoe brought German ideas to Manchester - Peter J.T. Morris and Peter Reed3 James Bryce’s Manchester: the politics of the remaking of Owens College, 1865-75 – Stuart Jones4 Enriqueta Rylands, founder of the John Rylands Library – Elizabeth Gow5 William Boyd Dawkins: race, geology and the deep past in Manchester, 1869-1929 – Chris Manias6 Ancoats and lab coats: Sheridan Delépine and municipal public health – Michael Worboys7 ‘In the grey-built city of the mind / Wave the green boughs of a few hostage powers’: Eva Gore-Booth, Esther Roper and the Manchester University Settlement in Ancoats, 1896-1907 – John McAuliffePart II: Civic university and civic decline – Stuart JonesVignette 2: Catherine Chisholm and the Manchester Babies’ Hospital – Peter Mohr with Stuart Jones8 Three Zionists: Samuel Alexander, Chaim Weizmann and Lewis Namier – David Hayton9 Shared friendship and divided politics: Patrick Blackett and Michael Polanyi in Manchester – Mary Jo NyeVignette 3: Formed in Europe, shaped in Manchester: refugee engineer, Professor Franz Koenigsberger – Jonathan Aylen10 William Arthur Lewis and economic development: a Manchester story – Gerardo Serra11 Tools versus minds: two Manchester computing traditions – James Sumner12 Social anthropology at Manchester and the study of modernity – Katherine AmblerVignette 4: Shock City: Michel Butor and W.G. Sebald in Manchester – Catherine Annabel13 Dorothy Emmet: ‘for administrators whose hearts are with the anarchists, and anarchists who can have a heart for the administrators’ - Rachael Wiseman14 Gilbert Gadoffre: institutionalising cultural reproduction – Derek RobbinsPart III:The University in the post-industrial city – Stuart Jones15 Making an impact: Brian Cox, Jodrell Bank and changing perceptions of science in the twenty-first century – Matthew Cobb16 Post-crash economics: liberal education through struggle against the curriculum – Joe Earle, Sukhdev Johal and Karel Williams17 Merger, global ambition and a renewed civic role – the University of Manchester from 2004 to 2024 - Luke GeorghiouEpilogue – Dame Nancy RothwellIndex