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Gabriel Moshenska

Research Interests

  • Archaeology, anthropology and history of modern conflict
    The civilian experience of warfare, focusing on the British Home Front in the Second World War.  This includes an ongoing fieldwork-based project on air-raid shelters and extensive historical research on children and the material culture of violence.  I have written extensively on the theory of conflict archaeology including issues of memorialisation, education, human remains and research ethics. 
  • Public archaeology
    The public understanding of the past is a methodological approach to archaeology rather than a distinct sub-discipline.  As such, it has been a consistent element in all of my research.  I am interested in numerous aspects of public archaeology including fringe or alternative archaeologies, religious and nationalistic constructions of the past, and the politics and economics of the heritage industry.  I have a particular interest in public interactions with the archaeological process. 
  • Community archaeology
    I continue to work with a range of schools and community heritage initiatives in and around London.  I have taken part in ongoing debates about the nature of community archaeology; its aims, strengths and problems.  I am committed to an accessible and democratic approach to the study of the past that empowers and enables interested groups or individuals to practice archaeology. 
  • History and philosophy of archaeology
    My current research aims to provide a historical context for the development of public archaeology in Britain over the past two hundred years.  This research will focus on popular encounters with archaeological processes and materials, from nineteenth century mummy-unrollings to twenty-first century webcams on excavations.  My wider aim is to locate the development of public archaeology in relation to changing ideas of witnessing and audiences in the history of the natural sciences. 

Research Directory Records

Educational Background

  • 2009:  PhD Archaeology, UCL
  • 2005:  MA Research Methods, UCL
  • 2004:  BSc Archaeology, UCL

Forthcoming

  • Moshenska, G. Forthcoming. Digging up Pook's Hill: archaeological imaginaries in Kipling's Puck stories. Landscapes.
  • Moshenska, G. Forthcoming. The archaeological gaze. In A. Gonzalez-Ruibal (ed.) Reclaiming Archaeology: Beyond the Tropes of Modernity. Abingdon: Routledge.
  • Moshenska, G. Forthcoming. Conflict.  In P. Graves-Brown, R. Harrison and A. Piccini (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Moshenska, G. Forthcoming.  Spaces for Children: School Gas Chambers and Air Raid Shelters in Second World War Britain. In H. Orange (ed.) Reanimating Industrial Spaces. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
  • Moshenska, G. Forthcoming.  ‘Token scraps of men’: white lies, weighted coffins, and Second World War air-crash casualties.  In N.J. Saunders and P. Cornish (eds.).  Bodies in Conflict: Corporeality, Materiality and Transformation.  Abingdon: Routledge. 
  • Moshenska, G. Forthcoming. Reclaiming memory: a polemic. In K. Lafrenz Samuel and T. Rico (eds) Heritage Unbound: Rhetoric and Justice in Cultural Heritage. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
  • Moshenska, G. Forthcoming. Children in ruins: bombsites as playgrounds in Second World War Britain. In T. Petursdottir and B. Olsen (eds) Ruin Memories: Materiality, Aesthetics and the Archaeology of the Recent Past. Abingdon: Routledge.
  • Moshenska, G. Forthcoming. Thomas 'Mummy' Pettigrew and the study of Egypt in early nineteenth century Britain. In W. Carruthers (ed.) Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures. Abingdon: Routledge.

2013

  • Moshenska, G. 2013. The Duke of Sussex's library and the first debates on the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana. Milton Quarterly 47(1): 1-12.

2012

  • Moshenska, G. and S. Dhanjal (eds). 2012. Community Archaeology: Themes, Methods and Practices.  Oxford: Oxbow.
  • Moshenska, G. 2012.  M.R. James and the archaeological uncanny. Antiquity 86: 1192-1201.
  • Moshenska, G. 2012.  Unbuilt heritage: conceptualising absence in the historic environment.  In S. May, H. Orange and S. Penrose (eds.) The Good, the Bad and the Unbuilt: Handling the Heritage of the 21st Century.  Oxford: Archaeopress, 123-6.
  • Moshenska, G. and S. Dhanjal. 2012.  Introduction: thinking about, talking about, and doing community archaeology.  In G. Moshenska and S. Dhanjal (eds) Community Archaeology: Themes, Methods and Practices.  Oxford: Oxbow.
  • Moshenska, G. 2012. The Institute of Archaeology: the First 75 Years.  British Archaeology May/June 34-7.
  • Moshenska, G. 2012. Selected correspondence from the papers of Thomas Pettigrew (1791-1865), surgeon and antiquary. Journal of Open Archaeology Data 1(2).
  • Moshenska, G. 2012. The many faces of public archaeology: a response to Thomas King. AP Online Journal in Public Archaeology 2: 18-20.
  • Moshenska, G. 2012. Resonant materiality and violent remembering: archaeology, memory and bombing. In: S. Dudley (ed.) Museum Objects. Abingdon: Routledge.
  • Moshenska, G. 2012. Alternative archaeologies. In N.A. Silberman (ed.) The Oxford Companion to Archaeology (Second Edition). New York: Oxford University Press.

2011

  • Myers, A. and G. Moshenska (eds). 2011.  Archaeologies of Internment.  New York: Springer/One World Archaeology.
  • Moshenska, G. and A. Myers.  2011. An introduction to archaeologies of internment.  In A. Myers and G. Moshenska (eds)  Archaeologies of Internment.  New York: Springer/One World Archaeology: 1-19.
  • Moshenska, G. and T. Schadla-Hall. 2011 Mortimer Wheeler’s Theatre of the Past.  Public Archaeology 10(1): 46-55.
  • Moshenska, G., S. Dhanjal and D. Cooper.  2011.  Building Sustainability in Community Archaeology: the Hendon School Archaeology Project.  Archaeology International 13/14: 94-100.
  • Moshenska, G. 2011.  Diagnosing Sir John Gardner Wilkinson: a footnote to the history of Egyptology. Antiquity 85: [Online]
  • Moshenska, G. 2011. ‘Impudent Lies’: Rhetoric and Reality in Wartime Heritage Protection, 1943-2003.  Present Pasts 3(1): 68-70.
  • Moshenska, G. and P. Burtenshaw. 2011. Commodity Forms and Levels of Value in Archaeology: a Response to Gestrich.  Present Pasts 3(2): 83-4.
  • Parker Pearson, M., T. Schadla-Hall and G. Moshenska.  2011. Resolving the human remains crisis in British archaeology.  Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 21.
  • Moshenska, G. 2011.  Review of ‘Unquiet Pasts: risk society, lived cultural heritage, re-designing reflexivity’ (eds. S. Koerner and I. Russell).  International Journal of Heritage Studies 17(5): 523-6.
  • Moshenska, G. 2011.  Review of ‘World Crisis in Ruin: the Archaeology of the Former Soviet Nuclear Missile Sites in Cuba’. (M. Burström, A. Gustafsson and H. Karlsson). Public Archaeology 10(4): 235-7.

2010

  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  Gas masks: material culture, memory and the senses.  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16(3): 609-28.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  Working with memory in the archaeology of modern conflicts.  Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20(1): 33-48.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  Charred Churches or Iron Harvests?  Counter-monumentality and the commemoration of the London Blitz.  Journal of Social Archaeology 10(1): 5-27.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  Government gas vans and school gas chambers: preparedness and paranoia in Britain, 1936 – 1941.  Medicine, Conflict & Survival 26(3): 193-204.
  • Moshenska, G. and A. Thornton 2010. Public Archaeology interviews Neal Ascherson.  Public Archaeology 9(3): 153-65.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  ‘At variance with both general and expert opinion’: the later works of Lieutenant-Colonel Professor Laurence Austine Waddell.  Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 20(1): 49-52.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  Portable antiquities, pragmatism and the ‘precious things’.  Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 20: 24-7.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010. The Gas Mask.  Military Times 3: 80.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  Air Raid Shelters: a short history of British air-raid shelters WW1 and WW2.  Military Times.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  Spanish Civil War air-raid shelters in Barcelona.  Subterranea 25: 54-6.
  • Moshenska, G. and S. Wild 2010. Sunny Hill Park and the Borough of Hendon at war.  Subterranea 24: 13-15.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  Review of ‘Contested Objects: material memories of the Great War’ (eds. N.J. Saunders and P. Cornish).  Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20(2): 279-81.
  • Moshenska, G. 2010.  Countering counterinsurgency.  Review of ‘The counter-counterinsurgency manual, or, notes on demilitarizing American society’. (Network of Concerned Anthropologists).  Public Archaeology 9(2): 121-3.

2009

  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  The reburial issue in Britain.  Antiquity 83: 815-20.
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  Resonant materiality and violent remembering: archaeology, memory and bombing.  International Journal of Heritage Studies 15(1): 44-56
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  Beyond the viewing platform: excavations and audiences.  Archaeological Review from Cambridge 24(1): 39-53.
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  Contested pasts and community archaeologies: public engagement in the archaeology of modern conflict.  In R. Page, N. Forbes and G. Pérez (eds.).  Europe’s Deadly Century: Perspectives on 20th century conflict heritage.  London: English Heritage, 73-9.
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  Second World War archaeology in schools: a backdoor to the history curriculum?  Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 19: 55-66.
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  What is public archaeology?  Present Pasts 1: 46-8. 
  • Moshenska, G. and P. Burtenshaw 2009.  Response: the values of archaeology.  Present Pasts 1: 55-6
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  Reply to comments by John Carman and Nils Anfinset: expanding the debate.  Norwegian Archaeological Review 42(2): 181-2.
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  Review of ‘Contemporary Archaeologies: excavating now’.  (eds. C. Holtorf and A. Piccini 2009).  Norwegian Archaeological Review 42(2): 205-7.
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  Review of ‘Childhood in the Past: an International Journal’ (ed. E. Murphy 2008).  Archaeological Review from Cambridge 24(2): 183-7.
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  Review of ‘A splendid idiosyncrasy: prehistory at Cambridge 1915-50’. (P.J. Smith 2009).  Public Archaeology 8(4): 373-7.
  • Moshenska, G. 2009.  Review of ‘Contested spaces: sites, representations and histories of conflict. (L. Purbick, J. Aulich and G. Dawson eds. 2007).  Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 19: 100-3.

2008

  • Moshenska, G. 2008.  Ethics and ethical critique in the archaeology of modern conflict.  Norwegian Archaeological Review 41(2): 159-75.
  • Moshenska, G. 2008.  A Hard Rain: children’s shrapnel collections in the Second World War.  Journal of Material Culture 13(1): 107-25.
  • Moshenska, G. 2008.  ‘The Bible in Stone’: pyramids, lost tribes and alternative archaeologies.  Public Archaeology 7(1): 5-17.
  • Moshenska, G. 2008.  Community archaeology from below: a response to Tully.  Public Archaeology 7(1): 52-3.

to 2007

  • Moshenska, G. 2007.  Oral history in historical archaeology: excavating sites of memory.  Oral History 35(1): 91-7. 
  • Moshenska, G. 2007.  Unearthing an air-raid shelter at Edgware Junior School.  London Archaeologist 11(9): 237-40.
  • Moshenska, G., S. Dhanjal, J. Doeser, S. Phillips and S. Allen 2007. Community archaeology: against the odds.  Current Archaeology 213: 34.
  • Moshenska, G. 2007.  Review of ‘Writing archaeology: telling stories about the past’ (B. Fagan 2005).  Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 18: 190-2.
  • Moshenska, G. 2006.  The archaeological uncanny.  Public Archaeology 5(2): 91-9. 
  • Moshenska, G. 2006.  Scales of memory in the archaeology of the Second World War.  Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 17: 58-68. 
  • Moshenska, G. 2006.  (ed.)  A Decade of Discovery: the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project 1996-2005.  Great Dunham: Heritage. 
  • Moshenska, G. 2006.  Edgware Junior School air-raid shelter dig.  Subterranea 11: 50.
  • Moshenska, G. 2005.  Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project interim report 2004.  Norfolk Archaeology 44(4): 727-8. 
  • Moshenska, G. 2005.  The Sedgeford Village Survey: digging for local history in the back garden.  The Local Historian 35(3): 159-67. 

Second Supervisor

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