Career
Chinn initially followed his father and grandfather into bookmaking before entering academia, gaining his Ph.D. in 1986.
His work in the community made him a popular figure, and in 1994 he was invited by the Birmingham Evening Mail to write a two-page feature on local history. This proved extremely popular and Chinn has written a weekly column for the paper ever since.
Chinn holds the position of Professor of Community History at the University of Birmingham and is also director of the Birmingham Lives project. He is the author of over twenty books on the history of Birmingham and the urban working class in England. He presents a weekly radio programme on BBC WM, often appears on local television programmes such as Midlands Today and also writes a weekly local history for the Express & Star. He is Director of the Birmingham Lives multimedia archive at UoB (formerly at South Birmingham College).
He has also made three videos and provided spoken links on two CDs of songs about Birmingham.
In 2000 Chinn was a leading figure in the temporarily-successful, but eventually doomed, campaign to save the Longbridge car factory from closure. In 2001 he was awarded the MBE for services to local history and charity. When the rebuilt Bull Ring was opened in 2003 Chinn criticised it for the lack of concern its developers and planners had shown towards market traders who had been the mainstay of the Bull Ring for the 800 years up to 1964, when the much-criticised previous shopping centre was built on the site. Chinn has also been prominent in the campaigns to save the last back-to-back houses in Birmingham, now a National Trust museum in Inge Street; and for a memorial to the victims of the Second World War Blitz on the city, sited in Edgbaston Street in the Bull Ring. In October 2007 he became patron of the St John's Church Preservation Group, which is campaigning for the reopening of St John's Church, Dudley.
In December 2010 he appeared on Ian Hislop's BBC television show "Age of the Do-Gooders", in which he championed George Dawson; a "non-conformist preacher, and a bit of a showman". He has also appeared on the BBC's Question Time.
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