Top of the Campops: 60 things you didn’t know about family, marriage, work, and death since the middle ages.

The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.

The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (Campop) was founded in 1964 by Peter Laslett and Tony Wrigley to undertake quantitative research in family history and demographic history. Over the last 60 years the group has revolutionized the study of historical demography and social structure in Britain.

Early work at Campop concentrated on the use of parish registers and population listings, and breakthroughs included Laslett’s discovery of the predominance of nuclear households in pre-industrial England, and Wrigley’s work on fertility decline in Colyton. In 1966, Roger Schofield joined the Group. He quickly became involved with the Group’s growing army of local data-gathering volunteers, and especially promoted the application of computer-aided analysis of the data they were accumulating.

The magazine and newsletter Local Population Studies was launched in 1968 as a means of communication with the volunteers, a forum which would enable common problems and new ideas to be discussed. The journal still thrives today.