History, Heritage and Archives
The History, Heritage and Archives cluster explores all aspects of archiving and cultural heritage practice, and the opportunities and tensions that present themselves for scholars, institutions and practitioners in these fields. Through this work, we reflect on the relationship between people, media and the past.
Our research covers a range of activities concerned with the past, drawing upon a number of specialisms and interdisciplinary methods, with strong influences from Television Studies and Fan/Audience Studies. We ask questions about history of, in and around the media, exploring a range of forms as sites of historical mediation and the production of ways of thinking about and engaging with the past. Integral to this approach is an understanding of the central role of media forms to modernity and its development and historicization, and the emergence of theoretical and everyday concepts of the historical.
We locate the mediation of history in the context of the wider field of creative production, exploring what is at stake by asking who speaks about the past, when, in what forms, about what issues and with what effect and affects? We attend also to the democratization of the field presented by ideas of 鈥榩ublic history鈥�, through the mediatisation of history, of the role of media in heritage practice and the possibilities of the digital turn for production and critique. Archives are important to us, as active and community-based projects: archival practices are centrally positioned within participatory online cultures, serving as anchors for social and public history and memory studies research. These archives offer a space where we might see 鈥榓lternative鈥� or 鈥榥ew鈥� histories produced through the contributions of fans and other archivists involved in these communal practices. Through our work, we aim to uncover previously overlooked stories, artefacts and traditions, and shed light on the experiences and contributions of different communities to (cultural) heritage.
Areas of activity
- Media as historical sources
- History and heritage practices in media communities, including fan practices
- Histories of media experience, particularly in relation to gender and everyday life
- Histories of creative labour, particularly gendered labour
- Media archival and heritage practice
- The challenges of online archives (for historians and archivists)
- The historical retrieval of the UK adult entertainment business
- Commemoration and everyday media memory
Cluster members
- Dr Nick Webber (current Director of BCMCR)
- Dr Vanessa Jackson听
- Dr Hazel Collie
- Professor Oliver Carter听
- Dr Pedro Cravinho
- Dr Faye Davies听
- Professor Nicholas Gebhardt
- Dr Ed McKeon
- Dr Annette Naudin
- Dharmesh Rajput
- Dr Charlotte Stevens听
External members
- Nancy Jackson (BCU Library and Learning Resources)
- Dima Saber (Meedan)
- Angela English (independent researcher)