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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Alec Corio
PhD Student, Department of Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts
I am a full-time research student in Religious History, in the Religious Studies Department at the Open University. My PhD thesis is on ‘British Perceptions of Roman Catholicism and National Security 1850-1973’, funded by the AHRC and ESRC under their Global Uncertainties initiative. My supervisors are Professor John Wolffe and Dr Carol Richardson. My research and teaching interests include historiography, popular religion and lay devotion, religious polemic, saints and miracle cults and material and visual culture.
Lindsay Polly Crisp
PhD student, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths. Associate Lecturer (AA100) and Senior Faculty Manager, Faculty of Arts, The Open University in the East of England
My doctoral project (supervised by Professors John Hutnyk and Janis Jefferies) is to develop theoretical responses to materiality through an interrogation of dust and the fragment. I am particularly interested in the implications of the artwork 'Break Down' (2001) in which, having catalogued his possessions, the artist Michael Landy systematically dismantled and granulated everything he owned. I want to argue that 'Break Down' can be seen as an articulation of modalities including the system, the fetish, nostalgia and fragmentation.
Jill Harrison
Lecturer in
Art History, Research Affiliate
and PhD Student, Faculty of Arts
My research is primarily concerned with 13-15 th century Italian art and material culture. My PhD reconsiders the contemporary reputation of the artist Giotto in relation to issues of art, avarice and ambition in Trecento Italy.
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Dr Graham Harvey
Reader in Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts
“Materiality” in various forms is of growing importance in Religious Studies. Perhaps this arises from a slightly longer term interest in religion as performance and certainly contests an older tradition of focusing on belief and transcendence. My research interests — and those of most of my co-supervised PhD students — are, broadly, about Paganisms and indigenous religions (particularly but not exclusively Maori and Ojibwe). I engage with the ways in which people contest (implicitly in practice and increasingly explicitly in discourses too) separations of nature / culture and humanity / larger-than-human world. Both of these can embrace the intentional agency of artifacts. In my continuing explorations of “the new animism” I have become increasingly interested not only in what it means to speak, for example, of “rock persons” but also of “artifact persons”. Examples of the latter include the ways in which Maori in Britain interact with the wharenui , ancestor-house, Hinemihi (near Guildford ) and with Taonga stored and displayed in museums, and the ways in which Pagans interact with ancestors (including, e.g., cremains and burial gifts).
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Dr Jessica Hughes
Lecturer, Department of Classical Studies, Faculty of Arts
I joined the Department of Classical Studies at The Open University in 2008. My research focuses on the material culture of Greece and Rome , and I have a special interest in the field of material religion. I am currently writing up a monograph entitled ‘The Anatomy of Ritual’, which is a comparative study of votive body parts from sanctuaries in Classical Greece, Hellenistic Italy, Roman Gaul and Asia Minor . In addition to looking at how material culture functioned in antiquity, I am also interested the reception of ancient objects, sites and traditions in later religious contexts. For instance, one of my recent papers explored how the aesthetics of eighteenth-century Italian Catholicism influenced the restoration of ancient Roman sculpture, while another ongoing research project addresses the Neapolitan nativity scenes which include models of classical ruins. All of these varied explorations reflect my broader interest in the relationship between objects and belief, and the role of material culture in shaping as well as expressing ideas about the sacred.
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Dr Lotte Hughes
Lecturer in African Arts and Cultures, 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 lead a new 3-year project, called Managing Heritage, Building Peace: Museums, memorialisation and the uses of memory in Kenya , that builds upon a pilot phase and is funded by the AHRC; the British Academy funds a related UK-Africa partnership project. Broadly speaking, this will examine and compare state-led national heritage management and community-driven initiatives that include community peace museums and the conservation of sacred forests. We are collaborating with Kenyan scholars, museum professionals and members of civil society. See the project website for more information.
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Dr Janet Huskinson
Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Classical Studies, Faculty of Arts
I am a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Classical Studies (from which I retired in 2008). My research interests are on carved marble sarcophagi from the city of Rome (from second to fifth centuries AD), and in their reuse by later societies. I am currently finishing a book on strigillated sarcophagi (decorated with curving fluting) and co-editing a volume on current work on Roman sarcophagi, to which I have contributed a paper on the ‘life histories’ of three sarcophagi across centuries. Both volumes cover all angles from the art historical to the artefactual.
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Dr Elizabeth McKellar
Senior Lecturer and Staff Tutor in Art History, Faculty of Arts
I am an architectural historian working on seventeenth and eighteenth-century Britain. My main interests are in urbanism, middle class culture and the social and cultural construction of architecture in the period. Much of my work has been focussed on London and its planning and identity in the long eighteenth century. My first book The Birth of Modern London; the development and design of the city, 1660-1720 investigated the development of London after the Fire, the genesis of the urban terrace house and architectural and building practice in the period. My second book, co-edited with Barbara Arciszewska, Articulating British Classicism: New Approaches in Eighteenth-Century Architecture sought to expand the range of methodologies and issues with which architectural history might be engaged, including material culture approaches. My own chapter in this book dealt with the historiography of architectural history in the twentieth century, another long-standing research interest of mine. I am currently writing a book for Yale University Press The Landscapes of London: the Metropolitan Environs 1650-1830 that explores the urban-rural relationship in the long eighteenth century.
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Prof Phil Perkins
Department of Classical Studies, Faculty of Arts
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Bijon Sinha
PhD Student, Department of Classical Studies, Faculty of Arts
Dr Catherine Tackley
Lecturer in Music, Faculty of Arts
My research interests lie within the broad area of historical and critical musicology with particular reference to jazz and popular music. My monograph The Evolution of Jazz in Britain, 1880-1935 was published in 2005, and I am now developing this work with OU colleagues as part of the AHRC-funded project 'What is Black British Jazz?' An important strand of my work considers sound recordings as material culture - developing critical perspectives on the objectification of ephemeral musical performances in recordings and the resulting canon of 'works' which becomes the focus for academic study and jazz fans alike. I have recently published a chapter entitled 'Jazz Recordings as Social Texts' in Recorded Music: Performance, Culture and Technology (ed. Bayley, Cambridge University Press, 2009) and I am currently working on a monograph on the Benny Goodman album 'The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert' as part of the Oxford University Press series 'Studies in Recorded Jazz'. A larger project uses recordings as a way of studying the life span of musical works with reference to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
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Dr Clare Taylor
Lecturer and Staff Tutor in Art History, Faculty of Arts
I joined the Art History Department in 2011. My research interests are focused on the material culture of the interior, and the ways in which decoration can disrupt or reinforce hierarchies within the domestic space. My thesis, ‘Figured Papers for Hanging Rooms: The production, design and consumption of wallpaper for English domestic interiors, c.1740-c.1800’ focused on this hitherto neglected material and its relationship to other, supposedly more authentic, finishes including textiles and stucco. I am also interested in the reception of eighteenth-century interiors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the ways in which components of eighteenth-century decoration have been reinterpreted. For example, a forthcoming book chapter examines the role of Chinese wallpaper in framing interiors of the 1920s and 1930s.
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Dr Paul-François Tremlett
Lecturer in Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts
I pursued my undergraduate degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Social Anthropology and the Study of Religions. With a regional specialization in Southeast Asia I decided to continue my studies and enrolled on the PhD programme in the Study of Religions department at SOAS having decided to focus on local religion and national identity in the Philippines at a specific site, namely the extinct volcano Mount Banahaw. Since then I have conducted research on masculinities in the Philippines, on the geographies of death in Manila and Taipei and I am currently engaged in research on religious groups involved in environmental advocacy and/or activism in the Philippines. My current research interests might just about be summed up as follows:
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Dr Susie West
Lecturer in Heritage Studies, Faculty of Arts
I am based in the department of art history. My background includes working as an architectural historian in the public sector, with my roots in archaeology. My material culture interests derive from an anthropological understanding of the cultural roles that the material world has played across communities; I am interested in reflexive relationships between us and our material environment, particular in our experience of landscape and built space. My research interests range from books as artefacts via historic private libraries 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.
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Sarina Wakefield
PhD Student, Department of History, Faculty of Arts
'Franchising Heritage: The Creation of a Transnational Heritage Industry in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi' (Supervisors: Rodney Harrison and Prof. K. Hetherington).
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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.
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