Professor Tim Benton
Professor of Art History
Faculty of Arts
My research interests include Le Corbusier's work of the 1920s and 1930s and the history of modern architecture and design. For several years he has been working on Le Corbusier's domestic architectural designs (1914-1935) which includes a study of all the architectural drawings and documents associated with these projects. I have developed computer software for the analysis of architectural drawings as part of this research. I contributed to two major exhibitions at the V&A: Art Deco 1910-1939 (2003) and Modernism Designing a new world (2006) and to the first major retrospective exhibition of the work of Charlotte Perriand at the Pompidou Centre, Paris (2006).
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Dr Marion Bowman
Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies
Faculty of Arts
I started working for the Open University in 2000. My interests are primarily vernacular religion and the inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural study of contemporary spirituality, particularly ‘alternative’, ‘New Age’ or ‘integrative religion’, with long term studies of Glastonbury and Celtic spirituality.
My research focus is contemporary spirituality in the UK and Europe, the lived experiences, beliefs, practices and material culture of individuals on the margins of and outside institutional religion. I concentrate on vernacular religion and ‘alternative religion’ / ‘New Age’, although I prefer the term ‘integrative spirituality’ to describe the phenomenon of people selecting from ideas and practices from a wide variety of religious, historic, indigenous and esoteric traditions in order to produce highly personalised forms of religiosity. I am interested in how apparently ‘new’ phenomena frequently are related to previous eras in the history of ideas and cultural and material tradition, and the extent to which superficially similar phenomena adapt and develop distinctively in different cultural contexts and physical locations.
Since the 1990’s I have conducted fieldwork in Glastonbury, a microcosm of ‘non-aligned’ spirituality, of the movement away from institutions to the importance of networks, new forms of community and communication, and spiritual experimentation including the creation of myth and ritual, and the performance of heritage.
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Dr Jovan Byford
Lecturer in Psychology
Faculty of Social Sciences
I am currently working on a research project which explores the history of Holocaust remembrance in Serbian society. The project focuses on the memory of a specific site of Jewish suffering – the Semlin concentration camp in Belgrade (Sajmište in Serbian) – where approximately 7,000 Jewish women, children and the elderly were murdered between March and May 1942.
This project explores the representations of the Semlin camp in Serbian historiography of the Second World War, in the media, in commemorative ceremonies, exhibitions and memorials between 1945 and the present. It approaches the memory of Semlin as a field of contestation, a symbolic space where, over the past sixty years, different memory communities competed over the possession and interpretation of the past, and where the meaning of the Holocaust was continuously constituted and negotiated. The project explores the ways in which the changing descriptions and interpretations of Semlin since 1945 echoed the broader ideological and cultural shifts in Serbian society. This includes looking at the effect that the rise of nationalism in the late 1980s – accompanied by the increased public remembering of the Serbian suffering at the hands of Nazi collaborators in Croatia - had on discourses and rituals of Holocaust commemoration and on popular perceptions of its uniqueness and significance.
More information on the project and personal webpage
Dr Louise Cooke
Associate Lecturer, Yorkshire Region
Freelance Practitioner
I am an archaeologist and my research concerns approaches to documentation, conservation and management of earthen building materials. Recent publications document this research undertaken in Turkmenistan and Central Asia (Cooke 2008, 2010). I am particularly interested in the connections between archaeological and conservation studies and contemporary uses of earth as a sustainable building material, alongside the ‘revival’ of earth building throughout the 20th century. I have ideas for further work linking this research through to contemporary heritage debates and dialogues.
I have worked on projects in the UK, Central Asia and Middle East, undertaking condition assessment and conservation planning for heritage sites. I am an expert member of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Earthen Architectural Heritage, and a director of Earth Building UK (EBUK). I am also book reviews editor for the Journal Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites.
I am currently working on a project commissioned by English Heritage (Yorkshire and the Humber Region) concerned with significance assessment of landscape and the contentious issues of understanding and managing the varied cultural and natural assets in the Vale of Pickering in Yorkshire. This is allowing me to question if ‘buried’ or ‘unseen’ landscape assets are the ‘new’ intangible.
I have been an Associate Lectuere for the Open University (Yorkshire Region) since 2007 for A251 (World Archaeology) and for the current (2010) presentation for AD281 (Understanding Global Heritage).
Sue Davies
PhD Student
Open University Business School
The involvement of external parties in the creation of museum exhibitions in Britain
My research explores the involvement of external parties, such as community groups, in the creation of museum exhibitions. I am particularly interested in how external parties become involved, what roles they play and why museums decide to include outsiders. I am focusing on the decision making process but I am also interested in the power relationships of co-production and the shaping of knowledge through exhibitions.
I am taking a qualitative approach and I am currently collecting data using semi structured interviews. I am focusing on temporary historical exhibitions which are created in house, as opposed to permanent displays, art exhibitions or exhibitions which are hired from other organisations. My sample will include exhibitions produced by museums of different sizes and governance types. I expect to complete my PhD in September 2010.
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Dr MariaLaura Di Domenico
Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour
Open University Business School
I am primarily an organizational theorist, and as such use critical sociological approaches in order to analyse issues pertaining to work, organisation and society. I was previously a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. My interest in heritage studies stems from my focus on the specific themes of discourse, identity and enterprise, upon which I have published widely. I am particularly interested in the politics and ethical issues surrounding the use of sensitive artefacts and the role of ‘dark’ or ‘atrocity’ heritage such as human remains in museums. I am also interested in the role of community-based development and enterprise, and the formation and re-articulation of organisational, cultural and individual identities. I also examine the interface across social, spatial and temporal boundaries. Those pertaining to heritage studies include the impact of commercial interests, and the interface and tensions between heritage and tourism. I use various conceptual and methodological lenses including ethnography, poststructural theory, discourse and narrative, postcolonial theory, and authenticity. I have professional experience in the heritage industry and I was previously employed by the Museums Association, a professional membership body representing museums, galleries and heritage professionals in the UK.
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Dr Fernando Dominguez Rubio
Research Associate
Pavis Centre for Cultural and Social Research, Faculty of Social Sciences
My recently completed thesis focused on the role that materiality plays in the production, representation and conservation of cultural forms. It did so through the detailed examination of a specific cultural object, the Spiral Jetty, a monumental earthwork sculpture produced by the American artist Robert Smithson. I intend to expand this research by conducting a study of contemporary art conservation practices in different museums, like the Tate Gallery. I shall develop a research proposal that will focus on the interplay between science and art and that will analyse empirically the practices, techniques and institutions through which contemporary culture is materially represented, conserved and transmitted.
Professor Ian Donnachie
Professor in History, Faculty of Arts
The Open University in Scotland
I am a historian with interests in World Heritage, industrial heritage and heritage management and interpretation. I have been a consultant for many heritage bodies in Britain and elsewhere and am currently chair of the Friends of New Lanark World Heritage Site.
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Andrew Fordham
PhD Student
Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences
My research focuses on incomers (or newcomers) to place and the processes involved in constructing ’local’ and ’incomer’ identities. I am interested in the role of heritage and tradition (amongst other things) within this process.
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Dr Karl Hack
Department of History
Faculty of Arts
I have research interests in SE Asian heritage including war memorials and museums. I co-ordinate the Faculty of Arts’ Empire and Postcolonial Studies Research Group
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Peter Hamilton
Photography historian and visual sociologist
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences
Photography, and photographic archives, are central to Heritage Studies, in my view. I’ve been working on various aspects of what are now called Heritage Studies for more than 30 years. This included carrying out social research and documentary photography projects on landscape change and the designation of AONBs for the Countryide Commission amongst others, on heritage sites, and on peasant and rural societies in Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America for UNESCO and other bodies. It also involved co-chairing the first OU Masters course about Heritage, D851: Representing the Nation, for social sciences and arts. Since around 1988 my main interests have been in questions about the visual representation of national and cultural identity through documentary and editorial photography, in France, Britain and the USA. This was primarily focused on understanding the history of the uses of photography, rather than its aesthetics, for I contend that the market ruling the production and circulation of photographs is central to an understanding of the emergence of particular photographic paradigms. Much research focused on various aspects of photojournalism, and its practitioners. More recently I have been concerned with all uses of photography in relation to heritage and memory, from the early 19th century until now. This embraces contemporary forms such as the internet, as well as more historical media such as books, albums and in particular, institutional archives.
Since 1990 I’ve written widely on French humanist photography and curated and participated in a number of retrospective exhibitions on both
individual photographers and the movement as a whole: identifying the key components of a paradigm of "Frenchness" that this body of work expresses, and its role in the reconstruction of French social and cultural identity after 1945. Over the last few of years I’ve researched the panorama and the photographic visualisation of modern society. Panoramas pre-date but also
prefigure photography itself, and purpose-made photographic panoramas begin at the birth of the medium. This research has produced a monograph shortly to be published by Reaktion, and a major exhibition "La Photographie panoramique de 1839 à nos jours) in the Pavillon Populaire, Montpellier from 6 November 2008 to 25 January 2009. Future plans include a history of military photography, and an historical survey of the role of photography in the development of motor sport since the late 19th century.
Dr Paul Hatherly
piCETL Teaching Fellow
Department of Physics and Astronomy and piCETL
My involvement in the application of physical science to heritage studies arises from a combination of my experience as an experimental physicist and my interest in matters of archaeology, heritage and conservation. As an example, my investigations have included a study of the nature and preparation of pigments used in 1st century Roman Britain using x-ray diffraction and luminescence techniques. These studies have produced so much more than raw scientific data; the outcomes are aiding the interpretation of the economic and social conditions in the south of England around the time of the Roman conquest; an interesting question in the context of the long-term heritage of Britain and our place in Europe.
In the area of conservation, I am interested in examining the long-term effects of conservation techniques at the scale of structure and composition of artefacts - an artefact may look sound, but conservation may have irreparably changed the chemical or physical structure rendering future study impossible. The question is then how can we conserve artefacts in as authentic a way as possible to allow future generations, probably with better analysis and conservation techniques, the benefit of those artefacts.
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Professor Kevin Hetherington
Professor of Geography
Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences
I conduct research on issues of museums, social space and heritage as well as more broadly on consumer culture. In recent years I have worked on
(i)issues of access and inclusion in museums
(ii) theorizing museum/heritage spatialities and temporalities and
(iii) looking at the position of museums within urban regeneration strategies.
I was a founding co-editor of the journal Museum and Society in 2003 www.le.ac.uk/ms/museumsociety.html
Recent books include Capitalism’s Eye (Routledge) and (with Anne Cronin) Consuming the Entrepreneurial City (Routledge).
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Dr Janice Holmes
Lecturer in History and Staff Tutor in Arts
The Open University in Ireland
My research interests are primarily in the area of nineteenth-century Irish Protestantism, in particular evangelicalism and revivalism. I have written and published work on the Ulster revival of 1859, open-air preaching and sectarian violence and female ministry within the Irish Protestant churches. I am also interested in heritage and public history. I developed an undergraduate course which brought students and museums professionals together to design and develop a public exhibition (Teenage Kicks: youth, culture and conflict in Northern Ireland; School Days: the best days of your life? ). In 2006 I curated an exhibition, in partnership with the Causeway Museum Service, titled Saved or Lost: Protestant evangelism in Ulster since 1790. Since then I have been interested in identifying, cataloguing and preserving vernacular religious buildings, or ‘mission halls’, across the north of Ireland.
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Dr Jessica Hughes
Lecturer in Classical Studies
Faculty of Arts
I am a classical archaeologist with a keen interest in how ancient material culture is preserved by and refracted through its reception in later periods. I am currently researching the representation of classical ruins in the ‘presepe Napoletano’ (nativity scenes from Naples); another of my heritage-related projects concerns the role of the body in historical reenactments. I have also recently contributed to a museum exhibition entitled ‘Assembling Bodies’, which will take place at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology from March 2009.
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Dr Lotte Hughes
Research Fellow
The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies; also member of History Department, Faculty of Arts
I am an historian of Africa, empire and postcoloniality, who works largely on Kenya. My current research focuses upon heritage, memory, memorialisation, identity, peace and reconciliation in Kenya, with some comparative reference to South Africa. I was PI of the AHRC-funded research project Managing Heritage, Building Peace: Museums, memorialisation and the uses of memory in Kenya, that built upon a pilot phase and was funded by the AHRC; the British Academy funded a related UK-Africa partnership project. Broadly speaking, this examined and compared state-led national heritage management and community-driven initiatives that include community peace museums and the conservation of sacred forests. We collaborated with Kenyan scholars, museum professionals and members of civil society. See the project website for more information
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Dr Jon James
Permanent Research Fellow, Materials Engineering group
Design, Development, Environment and Materials (DDEM)
Mathematics Computing and Technology (MCT)
My cultural heritage research is an extension of the Material Engineering group’s larger interest, and world leading expertise in the use of neutrons and X-rays to probe material properties deep within metallic objects. When applied to ancient artefacts these methods are typically used to determine the material from which an object is made and to indirectly answer questions relating to, for example, methods of construction and authenticity.
This interface between science and cultural heritage is a growing area of research which is currently being actively supported by the large scale facilities at which the work is generally conducted. For example, the group has particularly close links with the UK ISIS facility which is the world’s most powerful neutron source. A good example of a state of the art research project in this area and one in which I am currently involved is the ANCIENT CHARM project. ANCIENT CHARM is a European collaboration looking at the application of advanced neutron diffraction methods to cultural heritage research.
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Camilla Kennedy Harper
PhD Student (Part Time) – Department of Sociology, Open University
The Tate Gallery and its audience of art enthusiasts
My interest is in committed “art enthusiasts” and their response to the contemporary changes in public art galleries in the UK. Taking the Tate (Tate Modern and Tate Britain) and their membership as the focus for my research, I am looking at the relationship between changes in the field position of the Tate and the transformation of cultural dispositions and lifestyles among this core audience. My research is informed by Bourdieu’s theories on the process of social differentiation and the formation of lifestyles and cultural consumption.
My methodological approach is qualitative, using archival data and data obtained through semi structured interviews with Tate members and Tate staff.
Supervisors Team: Professor Tony Bennett (OU Sociology Department), Professor Elizabeth Silva (OU Sociology Department), Dr Helen Rees Leahy (Centre for Museology, Manchester University)
Email: ckh34@student.open.ac.uk
Dr Stephen Little
Senior Lecturer in Knowledge Management
The Open University Business School
I am a member of the Regional Analysis, Innovation Knowledge and Enterprise research exchange (RAIKE) within the Business School and the Regional Studies Association research network on Tourism, Regional Development and Public Policy. As Chairman of the Asia Pacific Technology Network and a regular visitor to East Asia I am interested in the potentially progressive role of heritage in the regional and national narratives that underpin policies in developmental and mature states. At the level of cities and communities I am working with Frank Go, Professor of Tourism Management at the Rotterdam School of Management, where he is a visiting scholar, on a study of landmark events using the European Capital of Culture programme to examine the conflicting narratives at the locations involved. Both are interested in the potential for heritage to support regional identity and capacity building in both the creative sector and other areas of economic activity.
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Maria Nita
Research Student
Religious Studies Department, Faculty of Arts
Heritage and Climate Change: A Religious Studies Perspective
I would like to participate in the present inter-disciplinary dialogue on heritage by offering a religious studies perspective on such - sometimes competing - categories as local/ global heritage or natural/ historical heritage. My research with faith groups that are involved in the Climate Change campaign evidences a focus on planetary representations in ecological ritual, as well as in investing the Earth with new values through a retelling of stories: the cosmic story of the Earth is retold as religious narrative for example. With a similar emphasis in mainstream, secular or quasi-environmental discourse, the iconic image of the Earth, the whirly blue planet seen from space, has become synonymous with ‘our planet’, ‘our home’, ‘our only home’. Yet many critics of Christian and Western thought argue that it is precisely this anthropocentric ownership, this separation between ‘us’ and ‘our planet’, or between ‘man’ and ‘the rest of creation’, that has led to the present ecological crisis, through an unfolding message of dominion and exploitation. Running concomitantly with the global concern, and increasingly growing in popularity, local community building and bioregionalism are thought by some to be the only real solutions to the crisis. But can the urgency of Climate Change accommodate our existing historical and aesthetic values? And what becomes worth preserving in the wake of an impending global calamity? I believe that this rapidly transforming field can contribute insights into the relationships between custodians and heritage, the construction of heritage discourses and interfaces in conflicting heritages.
Contact m.nita@open.ac.uk
Dr George Revill
Senior Lecturer in Geography
Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Science
My research concerns issues of landscape, technology, culture and identity.
I work on the politics of landscape and national identity in music of the English musical renaissance (1880 – 1940). My most recent work examines the way conceptions of place and landscape shape the practical and theoretical activities of folk music collectors. I have been working recently on the American folk music collector Alan Lomax in the UK and Europe. I have just started work on a book about the politics of landscape, music and environmental sound in 20th century Britain Landscape, Music and the politics of sound . I also work on landscape and the cultures of transport, mobility and technology. I am currently finishing a book for Reaktion Press which examines the role of the railway as a cultural icon of modernity.
I am currently chair of the Landscape Research Group. We publish the interdisciplinary journal Landscape Research .
I am also a member of the newly formed Research Advisory Board to the National Museum of Science and industry.
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Dr Daniel Rhodes
Associate Lecturer, Open University Scotland
My published research centres on defining the cultural expressions of identity formation and tangible material expressions of those engaged in social interaction in 19th-century colonial Africa, specifically Tanzania, Kenya and Sudan. Broadly speaking my work aims to demonstrate how material heritage can define more recent forms of self-representation and nation constructs within post-colonial society, thereby demonstrating how colonial social models and their approach to ethnic groups may have contributed to post-colonial conflict. The overarching theme is the integration of archaeology into contemporary social theory and the use of heritage and the recording and analyses of material culture as a means of defining and challenging the underlying models of contemporary social conflict.
I’ve also recently published a book called Archaeology and Development in Africa, examining the role that can potentially be played by archaeology in promoting good change in societies. My next publication will be as part of a new Encyclopaedia of Global Archaeology in which I’ll be contributing the section on Second Modernity and the Second Phase of European Colonialism.
Other research interests are also based on methods of historical archaeology including work in Iceland and Ireland, and I pay the bills by working as the National Trust for Scotland’s southern Scotland regional archaeologist.
Lynne Thompson
Associate Lecturer, South West Region
My main published research is related to English countryside movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the Open Spaces Society or Commons Preservation Society, the Women's Institutes and Young Farmer's Clubs, and their impact on the popular education of those who lived in the countryside, from allotment cultivation and practical classes in hedging and ditching, to formal courses in agricultural chemistry. My focus for analysis is the West Country and the North West for the purposes of comparison, both being pioneering areas of agricultural education for those no longer involved in schooling from the late 19th century to 1939.
The context in which these initiatives flourished requires an examination of the landowning and professional classes who brought the movements into being, which in turn means a more than working knowledge of who they were, where they lived and what motivated them ideologically, personally and politically. As a result, my research has broadened to include the formation and continuance of the National Trust, the influence of the local gentry and nouveau riches estate owners, country house social history.It also includes aspects of country life relating to the preservation of 'traditions' and heritage, commemorative practices, eg the erection of village war memorials, and the ways in which rural museums present the history of their locality. A minor research interest is in how past conflicts (eg popular rebellions) are unofficially commorated eg in public house signs, street names and localities, and I have published a study of the battle of Sedgemoor in the context of popular memory and meaning.
Dr Susie West
Lecturer in Heritage Studies
Faculty of Arts
My background is an architectural historian working in the public sector, with my roots in archaeology. My heritage studies interests are all based on material culture, from books as artefacts to country house landscapes. I have a particular interest in the presentation of heritage houses, from my experience as an academic researcher and as a professional historian producing interpretation materials for visitors. I am currently planning a book on the concept of the ‘heritage house’ and its diverse realisation, hoping to set the UK experience in a broader international context. I have policy research interests, and would like to develop an idea about the impact and nature of Heritage Lottery Fund grant aid.
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Christopher Wingfield
Associate Lecturer, West Midlands Region
Much of my research focuses on the the lives of museum objects, and the ways in which these become the focus for different kinds of human activity. I have written about the collections of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, where I have worked as a curator, and on issues of 'Englishness' as these relate to the collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. However, my current research focuses on the history of the collections of the London Missionary Society and I am keen to explore the history of missionary exhibitions and displays as a significant dimension of the material practices of British protestantism. I am developing an extension to this project to consider the contemporary significance of missionary collections and sites as forms of heritage for people in Britain, as well as in areas that embraced Christianity as a result of missionary activity.