DARG was started in Mick Billig's office on a Wednesday afternoon late November 1987. The people present included Derek Edwards, Mike Gane, Jonathan Potter, Dave Middleton, Nigel Edley and Ros Gill. We spent some time discussing the name and its acronymic connotations (LIAR - the Loughborough Ideology and Rhetoric group was a popular alternative). However, Discourse and Rhetoric seemed to pull together some core interests.

It was never intended as a formal research centre, with a head, membership, a budget and so on. It was primarily a vehicle for generating discussion at the intersection of a number of interests in discourse, rhetoric, activity and conversation. There was no common agenda or statement of beliefs. Indeed, in line with the rhetorical position we saw it as a creative arena for argument. Our aim was to create a research culture that would be informal, entertaining but also challenging.

At first it was just meetings in Mick's office, every Wednesday at 1.00, to look at some interview extracts (we were very fond of interviews then) or discuss some big issue (realism, discourse and ideology, interpretative repertoires vs. discourses). After an hour or so of that we would go for coffee somewhere and carry on arguing, (and gossiping, complaining, plotting and all the usual stuff).

Darg is based in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University , in the English midlands.

Throughout the 90s the group expanded. It wasn't long before we couldn't fit in Mick's office, and we tried a range of venues before moving into a large dedicated room. The University supported DARG with space and equipment money and we moved into some splendid accommodation (Hut P1) which provided research space for postgraduates, for transcription equipment, and for a seminar area. From an original complement of two postgraduates we started to get people wanting to do research at DARG from all round the world (DARG has had postgraduates from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Germany, Holland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, and the US).

During the 90s new staff arrived who added their own ingredients to DARG. Most notable were (are) Malcolm Ashmore, Sue Wilkinson, Celia Kitzinger (now at the University of York), Charles Antaki and Steve Brown; in the 2000s we were joined by John Cromby, Alexa Hepburn and Liz Stokoe, and most recently by Abi Locke and John E. Richardson. Each has reinvigorated DARG and pushed it in new directions. We have had an illustrious and exciting set of international visitors over the years, some passing through, some staying a few weeks or months.

Towards the end of the 90s DARG grew out of its old facilities. Some lunchtimes more than 30 people were cramming into the seminar room. So we split things up. The technical equipment was moved to a new dedicated laboratory. The DARG meetings are now in shared space - still every Wednesday at 1.00 in term time. They still keep to the original vision of generating research culture that is led by ideas - rather than money or ambition. We like it.