UCL Institute of Archaeology

A new seminar series in cultural heritage, public archaeology, conservation and museum studies is being launched by the Institute's Heritage Studies Section and the Centre for Museums, Heritage and Material Culture Studies.

The weekly programme of this ongoing series addressing cutting-edge research will include talks by invited guest speakers as well as original papers from those teaching across heritage studies at UCL. The broad aim of the series is to encourage inter-disciplinary debate and discussion to help direct the future critical study and practice of heritage. To this end, seminars in the autumn term will contribute towards the theme ‘innovative methodologies’, looking at novel and perhaps unusual ways to define and undertake heritage research. Aware that such studies can extend beyond the disciplinary boundaries of mainstream heritage, guest speakers will demonstrate a diverse range of expertise and interests, from cultural geography and photography to architecture and film.

The Heritage Studies Section and UCL Centre for Museums, Heritage and Material Culture Studies are committed to the notion that critical heritage studies must be open to such multifaceted research areas - and the methodological tools they incorporate - if it is to remain a meaningful and ethical force in twenty-first century life. This seminar series will provide a platform for such work.

Programme

• 3 October: Memorialising Impulses: Photography, Heritage and a Record of Europe (Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University)
• 10 October: Planet Bethlehem (Leila Sansour, Filmmaker and Chief Executive, Open Bethlehem)
• 17 October: Counter-Mapping Heritage: Story trekking, mapping ‘attachment’ and understanding the role of mobilities in heritage (Rodney Harrison)
• 24 October: Homelessness and Heritage: How archaeology can help (Rachael Kiddey, University of York)
• 31 October: Refiguring the geopolitics of the museum cabinet: Doing post-imperial ecologies of nation, art, affect and culture (Divya Tolia-Kelly, Durham University)
• 14 November: Innovation in Design, Delivery and Collection Management (Dinah Eastop, University of Southampton)
• 21 November: Micromuseology: Researching small, independent, single-subject museums (Fiona Candlin, Birkbeck)
• 5 December: Historians, People and Brown rats: different roles in making histories (Hilda Kean, Honorary Research Fellow, Ruskin College, Oxford)

Seminars take place on Wednesdays 5-7pm in Room 412, Institute of Archaeology and all are welcome.

Any enquiries about the series may be directed to Colin Sterling and Eleni Vomvyla.