By Dr Charlotte Faucher and Dr Clare Siviter, Department of French, School of Modern Languages
2024 marked the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, a series of pivotal agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and France. In this blog, Dr Charlotte Faucher and Dr Clare Siviter reflect on the contributions made by colleagues in the Department of French to remember this special year, contributions which have also helped to enhance specialistand public knowledge on Franco-British relations.
Dr Charlotte Faucher worked closely with Dr Guillaume Perissol from the Institut français du Royaume-Uni to create When Marianne and Britannia Meet, an exhibition tracing the history of the Entente Cordiale agreements and their global repercussions. Lucy Frazer MP (Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) and the French ambassador Hélène Duchêne opened the exhibition in London on 28 March. It then came to Bristol in June 2024. The formal opening at City Hall by the Lord Mayor of Bristol was followed by talks by Dr Faucher, Professor Martin Hurcombe and Professor Debra Kelly (University of Westminster). Together they discussed Franco-British relations: from the 1904 agreements to the 1908 Franco-British exhibition, which took place in London, to the role of a Bristol professor in strengthening Franco-British friendship during the two world wars. Around 80 people attended the event, and the exhibition was then on display for over 10 days at City Hall.
The exhibition was also presented in the rest of the Alliance Française’s UK network, including in Oxford and Cambridge, and at the Central Libraries in Manchester and Milton Keynes, as well as at the French Diplomatic Archives in Paris. The exhibition has been developed in partnership with the UK’s National Archives and French Diplomatic Archives, with support of Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking and the Friends of the French Institute Trust.
The exhibition brought together the original British and French copies of the Entente Cordiale, which are held at the respective national archives in Kew and Paris, for the first time since 1904.
When Marianne and Britannia Meet was also displayed at the British Library during “Rendez-vous at the British Library”, a symposium exploring the British Library’s rich French collections and celebrating the Entente Cordiale’s 120th anniversary on 6 December 2024.
The day kicked off with a ‘petit déjeuner FERN-UK’ – a breakfast lecture hosted by the French Education and Research Network UK, which aims to bring together and support UK-based French and francophone researchers – with Dr Faucher presenting on the history of the Entente Cordiale and responses to her co-curated exhibition.
Later that day, the British Library hosted two events under the umbrella title, ‘Rendez-Vous à la British Library’, which featured Dr Faucher, Dr Clare Siviter and Ros Schwartz of the Bristol Translates Summer School. Both events were organised by Sophie Defrance (Curator of Romance collections) and her colleagues at the British Library and supported by the French Embassy as celebrations of the Entente Cordiale’s anniversary. Throughout, the sheer scale of cultural exchange between the UK and France became apparent as we learnt that the British Library holds the second largest collection of material in French in the world.
Dr Charlotte Faucher moderates the first panel at the ‘Rendez-vous at the British Library’ event.
The afternoon symposium brought together academics, students, curators, translators and booksellers working from the 11th century to the present day, all using the British Library’s French Collections. The first panel, ‘France and the United Kingdom, Entente Cordiale’, was moderated by Dr Faucher and brought together the full spectrum of the academic career path, from Aude Moine presenting her PhD work on material culture through to the renowned expert in heraldry Michel Pastoureau on the British origins of the French tricolour flag. The next panel, ‘France and Beyond’, was chaired by Prof. Catriona Seth and featured two papers focusing on theatre by Dr Siviter and Prof Clare Finburgh-Delijani, who both used the British Library’s holdings of material from the French Revolution to think through questions of cultural and political production from 1789 to the present day. The three lightening papers also took us from the 1790s, starting in Saint Domingue with Dr Alex Fairfax-Cholmeley through to the British Library’s francophone African comic book collection with Daniel Lowe and its Endangered Archives Programme with Ruth Hansford.
Three shorter panels followed about translation, artists’ books, and medieval manuscripts before a joint visit to the fantastic ‘Medieval Women: In Their Own Words’ exhibition, which included a letter from Joan of Arc, featuring her first known signature, and which had left France for the first time to come to the British Library.
Dr Clare Siviter presents at the ‘Rendez-vous at the British Library’ event.
The evening continued to emphasise the importance and extent of Franco-British exchange with a final event, opened by Sir Roly Keating, the Chief Executive Officer of the British Library, and the French ambassador to the UK, Hélène Duchêne, who both reflected on the strengths of ‘London’s BN’ (shorthand for the British Library’s Parisian counterpart, the Bibliothèque nationale). This final session featured keynotes by the esteemed Professor William Marx of the prestigious Collège de France and the writer Artemis Cooper.
2024 brought an increased awareness of the Entente Cordiale in specialist and public understanding: from the historical participation of the Coldstream Guards in a ceremony at the Elysée on the anniversary of the signing of the agreement, through to the creation of the Entente Littéraire award, whose first award ceremony took place with Her Majesty The Queen and Mme Brigitte Macron. The 1904 meaning of Entente Cordiale has certainly changed over the past 120 years; nonetheless the governments and peoples of both countries overwhelmingly continue to value a close Franco-British bilateral relationship.
By George Thomas, Faculty Research Events and Communications Coordinator
As 2024 draws to a close, we caught up with some of our Faculty Research Centres and Groups to learn about their highlights from the academic and calendar year, as well as activities they are particularly looking forward to in 2025. This year’s blog is presented in two parts: one focusing on our Faculty Reseach Centres, the other on our Faculty Research Groups. To find out more about their research and how to get involved, contact details, social media accounts and website links are provided at the end of each entry.
Centre for Black Humanities
The Centre for Black Humanities has had a fantastic start to the 2024/5 academic year! We kicked things off at the end of the summer with a wonderful workshop session featuring our University of Cape Town-Bristol Fellow Dr Shanaaz Hoosain. The workshop, which explored themes of memories and identities in Dr Hoosain’s work, was co-convened with the Black South West Network (BSWN) and generously hosted in their incubator space. It was a rich event that invited participants to think through different global and local practices for co-creating heritage spaces with diverse communities. It also opened up new avenues for thinking about the BSWN’s UnMuseum project, which we are really excited to see! Whilst Dr Hoosain has now returned to UCT, we look forward to welcoming her back to Bristol in the Spring.
KMT, Maria Fernandez Garcia and MoYah discuss hip hop and gardening as forms of creative expression in the second Autumn Art Lecture at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA).
Across the Autumn, we have been busy hosting the 2024 Autumn Art Lecture Series. A longstanding highlight of the cultural life of the University, the Autumn Art Lectures have taken place every year (with exceptions for World War II and COVID) for more than a century and it was an honour to be asked to convene this year’s iteration. Under our theme ‘Creation & Liberation’, we brought together a rich and interdisciplinary chorus of speakers who invited the public to consider the potential for liberation offered by creativity in all its forms. Across four events that took us from the unexpected intersections of hip hop and gardening to the history and legacies of the Tudor court musician, John Blanke, we examined the threads of power, protest and art-making that weave together across the work of artists, writers and musicians. We have moved from Bristol’s Central Library to the RWA’s garden and from the local Jungle scene to celebrated novelist Monique Roffey’s imaginary island of St Calibri to celebrate artistic expression that challenges, uplifts, and liberates. It has been wonderful to showcase the amazing work being done by Centre members who have contributed to the series by organising lectures and chairing discussions. A special shout out to PhD students Lizzie Bowes and Marko Higgins for their stellar work on kicking off the series brilliantly and to Dr Leighan Renaud for wrapping it all up beautifully in her discussion with Monique Roffey!
Listen to DJ Krust talk about his life and career in the first Autumn Art Lecture at Bristol Library.
As we wind down TB1, we look forward to an equally active TB2. As the Centre celebrates a decade since its founding(!), we have been reflecting on our past, present and future(s). We have been thinking through the possibilities and implications for the work that we do after not only the fall of Colston, the murder of George Floyd and the reinvigoration of the Black Lives Matter Movement, but also after the race riots of this past summer and the closure of Black Studies and Black Studies-adjacent courses across UKHE. Watch this space for a programme of events and activities that we have planned over the next year to respond to these challenges and imagine a new future for the Centre for Black Humanities.
The two halves of the academic year highlight two different sides of the Centre for Medieval Studies (CMS): the first semester was full of visiting professors and the second will be filled with conferences. CMS hosted three distinguished visitors in TB1. Professor David Scott-Macnab (North West University, South Africa) was based at CMS as Leverhulme Visiting Professor (September-December). He enthused undergraduate students with a lecture on Gawain, gave masterclasses on editing to the English medieval research group and to the PhD students of the EU/UKRI-funded Doctoral Training Network REBPAF, and delivered the Annual Tucker-Cruse lecture. Visiting us from the University of Leiden and funded by Bristol’s Next Generation Visiting Researcher programme, was Dr Jelmar Hugen, a specialist in Middle Dutch literature, who gave a lecture on the literary history of Gawain to undergraduates and presented his current research on responses to the Grail story in our regular series of seminars. In partnership with the Italian Department, CMS also hosted Nick Havely (Professor Emeritus, University of York). As well as giving a fascinating and very well-attended talk for the Centre, pictured below, Prof. Havely co-taught Tristan Kay’s seminar on Dante’s Inferno in the Department of Italian; met with PGR students working in fields connected to his expertise; and gave an interview for the Italian student publication La Civetta.
Emeritus Professor Nick Havely delivers a lecture on Dante Alighieri before an audience.
2025 promises another rich programme of activities for our Centre. Nine CMS seminars are already scheduled for the second half of the current academic year, with speakers visiting us from leading UK and international institutions. We will host six major interdisciplinary conferences, including the Medieval English Theatre Society conference (29 March 2025), the French of the Celtic Worlds conference (9-11 April 2025), the Historical Sociolinguistics Conference (21-23 May 2025), the International Arthurian Society conference (September 2025), and the latest iteration of the hugely successful PG conference in medieval studies (24-25 April 2025). The CMS has also begun planning the large International Conference for Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Language, Literature, and Culture (Bristol 2026: icmrsllc.org). The CMS will again be well represented in sessions and a reception organized at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in the summer. Existing partnerships with Bristol Central Library and Bristol Archivesare ongoing and will culminate in the publication and launch of the catalogue of manuscripts in the city of Bristol (forthcoming in the CMS publication series with Boydell and Brewer), as part of Kathleen Kennedy’s British Academy-funded Cataloguing Bristol Manuscripts project. Impact activities with partner institutions such as Wells Cathedral, Aardman Animation, and Winterbourne Medieval Barn are also planned for 2025. An inaugural Summer School in Medieval Studies will bring students from around the world to study in Bristol in June.
The Centre for Creative Technologies (CCT) has had a dynamic and impactful year, involving interdisciplinary partnerships, and regional and international projects experimenting with creativity and technology: from a collaboration with Bristol Common Press on feminist poetic technologies to work with Knowle West Media Centre. Our aim for 2024 was to foster exchanges and create connections between academic researchers and the creative industry.
Learn more about the Centre’s collaborative work with Visiting Professor Stuart Candy.
CCT has organised a range of Friday Lunchtime Talks at the Pervasive Media Studio, from Bristol researchers to Zach Blas, all of which you can watch here. From July to November, the CCT and Brigstow Institute ran our second Alternative Technologies workshop series ran by Bristol researchers and Pervasive Media Studio residents. The Centre participated in an event at Knowle West Media Centre called ‘What if..? Seeds of Tomorrow Growing Today’ and co-director Ed King chaired a discussion with Brazilian media activist Felipe Fonseca. The year rounded off with co-directors Professor Ed King and Paul Clarke being involved in the ‘Caring AI’ workshop series on predictive AI in schools in Bristol, with Paul collaborating on sessions around data sharing, and Ed running games jams on ‘exposing bias in AI’ at Barton Hill Activity Club and Knowle West Media Centre. With talks, workshops, networking events and research seminars throughout the year, the CCT continues to take a leading fostering critical, creative, and socially engaged uses of technology.
Watch Centre members deliver insightful talks at the Pervasive Media Studio.
We are eagerly anticipating our Evening of Creative Technology, which will serve as the final event in the Alternative Workshop Series (2). Looking ahead to the new year, on January 23rd, an event at Watershed, co-hosted by the CCT, UWE’s Digital Cultures Research Centre, MyWorld, and both universities’ Impact Acceleration Accounts, will share the Narrative Technologies projects by Bristol and UWE researchers and professional creative technologists, which have each received seedcorn funding. Also in January, the CCT is looking forward to supporting the Voice, AI, Myth and Storytelling symposium co-organised by Prof. Genevieve Lively & Dr Francesco Bentivegna. We are planning another Friday Lunchtime Talk series following the success of 2024’s, so do get in touch if you work with or on creative technologies and would like to present. We are planning exciting activities for the reading group, including external speakers and creative writing opportunities. We will also continue to support early-career researchers with funding opportunities. Finally, we are excited for further collaborations with the Pervasive Media Studio and have been discussing developing further work in the area of creative community technologies with Knowle West Media Centre, CenSoF, and Ed King’s partners in Brazil. The AHRC and Arts Council’s Immersive Arts programme, which UWE are leading on with Bristol’s CCT as a partner, has started and the first round of applications comes in on 2nd December, so we are looking forward to seeing what artists want to explore with immersive technologies and experiencing the first work produced with the support of this programme in 2025.
2024 was another busy year for the Centre for Environmental Humanities. We have hosted talks by a wide range of visiting speakers, on topics from the history of the commons in England to aquariums at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and the ‘Great Storm’ of 1987. We were especially pleased to host the renowned environmental historian Harriet Ritvo in May. We worked with the curator Georgia Hall to hold successful workshops on working with artists and creative practitioners, and in the summer many MA students, PGRs and academics took part in a field trip to Exmoor where we met with park staff to discuss creative responses to management challenge with a focus on the theme of ‘Elegant Conversation’. We welcomed the second cohort of students on our MA programme in September. The Centre’s co-directors took part in the inaugural meeting of the European Environmental Humanities Network in Utrecht in February, and we continue to develop partnerships across Europe and beyond.
Centre members visit Exmoor National Park for a workshop on ‘Elegant Conservation’.
In that vein, plans for 2025 include applying for an ERC Synergy Grant with colleagues at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and KTH Stockholm. We are also looking forward to a PGT/PGR showcase on 21 February, as well as the usual programme of talks and reading groups. We are also planning to submit a co-authored article on environmental humanities in practice for a special issue of PMLA, and discussions on the location for the 2025 field trip are already underway…
The Centre for Health, Humanities and Science (CHHS) has held a vibrant programme of events over the Autumn term. The programme opened with a talk by Dan Degerman (Philosophy) on ‘Mania and the Capacity for Silence’. Degerman spoke about silence and its many nuances in psychopathology, from the agony of enforced silence to ineffable, empty or unworded silence associated with the breakdown of articulation. The seminar generated a lively discussion, and was followed a couple of weeks later by a guest talk by Lorna Mitchell, Head of Library and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. In a talk on the ‘Plant Humanities’, Mitchell focused on the significance of plants to our wellbeing, their role in social prescribing, and their crucial significance in the context of the development of new pharmacological treatments – as well as on the value of plants in their own right. She discussed the impact of climate change on biodiversity and plant habitats, and revealed the rich archival and other research resources available at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.
Dr Dan Degerman (Philosophy) introduces his research into silence and its many nuances.
Also in September, the CHHS held an all-day international symposium on Georges Canguilhem, the French physician and philosopher of science, organized by Federico Testa (Modern Languages), British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in French (Dr Testa has since moved to the University of East Anglia to take up a permanent lectureship). In October, another recent Bristol postdoc and current CHHS affiliate, Doug Battersby (now a Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of Leicester), organized an online symposium on ‘Victorian Literature and the Health Humanities’, featuring Sally Shuttleworth (Oxford), Andrew Mangham (Reading) and Anne Stiles (Saint Louis University), with an audience of well over a hundred.
One of the highlights of the term was Bodies 2, an all-day event bringing high-profile writers to Bristol to talk about a range of health-related matters. Organized by CHHS board member John Lee (English), the event was opened by Benji Waterhouse, NHS Psychiatrist, stand-up comedian, and author of the bestselling book, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here (2024). Waterhouse presented a hilarious standup-performance-cum-book-reading that also raised serious social and ethical questions about the profession of psychiatry and, more generally, about NHS mental-health service provision. ‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness’, as Samuel Beckett once put it, and Waterhouse’s opening talk about unhappiness was both funny and deeply moving. Other highlights included a talk by Anthony Warner (the ‘Angry Chef’) on ‘Ending Hunger’; an affecting talk by the palliative care consultant Rachel Clarke on her new book The Story of a Heart (2024), in which Bristol Royal Hospital for Children makes a prominent appearance. The day concluded with a talk by the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh on ‘Why are Hospitals so Horrible?’ In a poignant critique of the disregard with which hospitals in the UK are designed, Marsh pointed out that the architecture and design of UK hospitals, with their long corridors and their small and over-crowded wards, bears a closer resemblance to prisons than to places of healing and recovery. Marsh stressed the importance of colour, light, fresh air, and relative tranquility for recovery. He also highlighted the significance of artworks in allowing patients an imaginative release from their confinement in over-crowded wards.
Dr Rachel Clarke discusses her new book, The Story of a Heart, at the Bodies 2 event.
Looking forward, the CHHS will be hosting an equally lively programme in the new year. The first speakers, Simon Hall (University of Bristol) and Catherine Lamont (Arts Therapist), will be focusing on their project, ‘Prosthetic Futures: An Art and Science Collaboration on the Future of Reconstructive Prosthetics’, which is funded by Bristol’s Brigstow Institute. This will be followed by Andrew Gaedtke (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne), who will be speaking about his forthcoming monograph, Brain Narratives. Mark Paterson (University of Pittsburg), an expert on the body, senses, affects, and sensory technologies, will be visiting and speaking at the CHHS in April. In May, the CHHS will be hosting a talk by Helen Chatterjee, MBE, Professor of Human and Ecological Health at UCL and co-founder of the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance. Finally, in June, the Centre will be holding an event on online therapy: Marjo Kolehmainen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), who holds an Academy of Finland/Finnish Research Council five-year fellowship on the topic, will be focusing on the ways in which online therapy reconfigures notions of intimacy and trust, with a speaker/respondent from Bristol Medical School.
By George Thomas, Faculty Research Events and Communications Coordinator
As 2024 draws to a close, we caught up with some of our Faculty Research Centres and Groups to learn about their highlights from the academic and calendar year, as well as activities they are particularly looking forward to in 2025. This year’s blog is presented in two parts: one focusing on our Faculty Reseach Centres, the other on our Faculty Research Groups. To find out more about their research and how to get involved, contact details, social media accounts and website links are provided at the end of each entry.
Bristol Digital Game Lab
If we imagine 2024 as an open world game, and the Bristol Digital Game Lab as player, then there’s lots to celebrate in terms of achievements (although there have also been challenges!).
In 2024, we brought in over £300,000 of funding for research, impact, and commercialisation projects, significantly increased our party size to 250 members, and saw an uptick in successful postgraduate applications. In July 2024, we embarked on a major quest, Game Conscious™ Characters, with industry lead Meaning Machine, which will see us assess how players respond to First Person Talkers, a new genre of video game. Teaming up with industry legends Ndemic and Larian Studios meant we could offer insights into the impact and the writing of video games respectively, which we delivered through sold-out workshops to audiences in Bristol and beyond. We initiated expeditions inspired by the interests of Lab members. This includes the development of a video game to tackle the complex topic of postnatal depression, knowledge-exchange around the ethics and use of AI Tools for Game and XR Storytelling, ‘concept’ game jams for partners including Natural England and the Centre for Sociodigital Futures, sponsorship for the UK premier of asses.masses, an epic, 7+ hour, custom-made video game about labour, technophobia and sharing the load of revolution, a conference on New Directions in Classics, Gaming, and Extended Reality, which brought together 24 academic and industry speakers from eight different countries, and Antiquity Games Night, a monthly online collaborative play series.
Are you a budding adventurer looking to join a group? To gain a sense of what we do in the Lab, check out the following video and see below for a glimpse into 2025.
Next year will see the Lab exploring new worlds, starting with a Cabot-funded symposium on Can Games Teach? Games and the Environment. We’ll follow this with another Can Games Teach? event on Games and History/Heritage. We’ll also be running a series of player studies, so watch this space for paid opportunities to get involved in cutting-edge gaming research! Then there’s the XR game jam for the AI Tools for Games and XR Storytelling project, a postgraduate roundtable on Game Development, further industry workshops and research seminars in the pipeline, and showcases where we’ll feature the games we’re creating. We’ll also be defining and testing a broader service offering through the Lab, including consultancy, game jams, and player studies.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr Xiaochun Zhang, co-founder and co-director for several years, for all her hard work. Xiaochun will continue to support the Lab from her new home at UCL. In September 2024, we were delighted to welcome Dr Michael Samuel (Film and TV) as new co-director of the Lab.
To sign up to the Lab’s mailing list and to become a member, please visit our website. To follow our updates on LinkedIn, search for #BristolDigitalGameLab. You can also reach out to the co-directors: richard.cole@brstol.ac.uk and mike.samuel@bristol.ac.uk for further information.
Drinking Studies Research Group
The undoubted highlight of 2024 for the Drinking Studies Research Group (DSRG) was the hosting of the Drinking Studies Network’s triennial international conference at Bristol in March. We welcomed 40 speakers from across the UK and Ireland, as well as from Poland, Sweden, Denmark and the USA, with a great blend of early career researchers – our own Amy Burnett organised a panel on ‘Early Modern Drinking Establishments’ with ECRs from across Europe – and leading figures in the field, such as Geoffrey Hunt who flew in from San Francisco. We also hosted a hybrid session with colleagues in Australia and Japan to celebrate the launch of a partner research group: the AustralAsian Drinking Studies Research Group. We heard about subjects ranging from the growth of online sobriety communities, to the importance of Desi pubs, to the treatment of alcohol in popular music. You can read a full account of the conference and its key themes on the DSN website, here. The conference was a significant milestone for the DSRG, as it firmly established Bristol as one of the most important ‘hubs’ of the wider field of drinking studies.
Dr Stephen Spencer presents at the Drinking Studies Research Group’s international conference.
We are rounding off 2024 with another instalment in our series of ‘Project Talks’, where we welcome speakers who are leading major projects in the field of drinking studies to tell us about their research, and to advise us on the development of successful funding applications. We will be welcoming colleagues from the wider university when Karen Gray (School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol) and Martin Preston (School for Education, University of Bristol), along with horticultural therapist and activity leader Guy Manchester, come to share insights from their experience running the Hoppiness: Brewing in Care Homes project. This involved brewing beer with residents of care homes as a way of supporting wellbeing and forging social connection. In 2025 we have two events coming up that we are particularly excited about: a panel event on ‘Early Career Pathways in Drinking Studies’, which will bring together speakers with recent experience of navigating both academic and alt-ac careers post-PhD. We plan to run this is a hybrid event to benefit ECRs across the international Drinking Studies Network, not just those at Bristol. And we are also planning a grant-writing retreat in the spring to support the several members of the group who are working towards funding applications in this field.
The American Studies Research Group continues to expand and serve a growing demand from graduate students and academic colleagues studying the United States. We enjoyed welcoming new members from across the University in 2024 as we continued to run a diverse range of events, such as our PGR workshops, external speaker series, and academic roundtables. Some of the highlights of the last year included the hosting of a UoB Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor, Dr Vanessa Northington Gamble, who delivered a set of lectures on the history of race and medicine in America. She also met with our graduate students and offered some important guidance on research and networks. In accordance with the U.S. Election, we hosted an exciting post-presidential roundtable, featuring Bristol colleagues from the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) and History, as well as an historian from the London School of Economics, who together reflected on the recent result. We strengthened our partnerships, including one with American Museum in Bath, and recognize the additional financial support of the British Association for American Studies. We also continued to build several research and teaching links with North American universities.
Dr Lucas de Abreu Maia (Politics) responds to an audience question in the U.S. Election event.
The coming year presents many exciting opportunities for our Group. We aim to expand our membership further within the University and beyond. Our partnerships and our portfolio of events are aimed at engaging different audiences, including an event about Native American art in conjunction with the Rainmaker Gallery. We also running co-badged events, including a roundtable on American environmental history with the Centre for Environmental Humanities as well as a roundtable, examining the challenges and opportunities of studying race in America after the 2024 election. Such talks will help us reflect on and contextualize America’s upcoming 250th ‘birthday’ in 2026. We hope you will be able to join us!
In 2024, the Senses and Sensations research group continued to build its international reputation by hosting a series of virtual seminar papers from colleagues across North America, Europe and the UK. At the same time, we worked closely with colleagues at the Brigstow Institute to bring partners from the creative industry and heritage sectors into conversation with group members. We hope that, in time, this will stimulate new collaborations and generate ambitious, innovative and impactful funding applications. Finally, we were delighted to be able to host Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor, Mark Paterson, from Pittsburgh University. Mark is a work-leading scholar of sensation, and his presence really injected energy and focus into our activity.
Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor Mark Paterson delivers a talk on emotions and the senses.
Building on Professor Paterson’s visit in June-July, we have now submitted an ambitious application for AHRC Curiosity funding. This will enable us to build an innovative international research network that brings together sensory studies scholars and sensory ecologists. We are excited to (hopefully) win that grant and, if not, to pursue further avenues to realize our exciting and world-leading aspirations. In addition, we are focusing our internal conversations on two major challenges. The first is to explore ‘intangible’ sensations, from sense of place to sense of time. The second is to build capacity around Sensory Studies for a Planet in Peril. We hope that by focusing activity, we will inspire generative collaborations and new research partnerships.
The Early Modern Studies (EMS) research group is pleased to report on another fine year of activities. On 21 May 2024 we ran an event on ‘Engaging the Early Modern’: a round-table discussion on how our scholarship engages with the media, communities, the arts, industry, in co-production, and more. Another highlight was our annual Summer Symposium in July. This featured a keynote from Rachel Willie (Liverpool John Moores) on extraterrestrial travel, and six further papers from PhD, early career, and established researchers on topics including Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI, the performativity of walking, the religious poetry of Justinian Isham, Shakespearean tragedy, and early modern mining and metalworking. On 30th October, as part of our ‘Early Modern Conversations’ strand, we ran an event on ‘Teaching the Early Modern’: specialists in early modern studies from across the Faculty, both academics and postgraduate students, gathered to share their experiences of teaching the early modern in history, art history, theatre, comparative literature, liberal arts, Italian, and English. The event allowed us to share best practice and to explore future directions for early modern pedagogy at cross-Faculty level.
Early Modern Studies members have plans to present at next year’s conference in Bristol.
At the time of writing, we are organizing a research celebration event that will take place early in TB2: an opportunity to shout about and celebrate major and minor research achievements and successes. Behind the scenes, EMS officers have been working hard in preparation of the Society of Renaissance Studies biennial conference that will be coming to Bristol in July 2025. This major event now has attracted 300+ paper and panel proposals from international delegates, and plans are afoot for a very busy conference featuring three keynotes, a concert, drama reading, and more. More info here: https://www.rensoc.org.uk/event/srs-11th-biennial-conference/.
By Professor Richard Pettigrew, Department of Philosophy, School of Arts
To celebrate World Philosophy Day, Professor Richard Pettigrew tells us about a new project which will challenge the radical philosophical view of Longtermism—the idea that the impact of our actions on the far future is the most important consideration today. The project recently received a Leverhulme Trust Grant and runs until August 2027.
Should I tell a friend a lie to save them from upset? Should I spend my latest pay check on something for myself, or should I use it to treat a family member who’s been going through a tough time? In ethics, we ask questions like this. We ask what we should do when the different things we might do affect others in different ways. But this raises a question: Which others? Who else belongs to my ‘moral circle’? Many arguments in ethics in recent years have tried to show that our moral circle is larger than we often take it to be. Animal welfare advocates argue animals other than humans should be included in our moral circle; and, more recently, people have argued that, at some point in the future, artificial intelligences might become sufficiently sophisticated that they too should be included. Those who study philanthropy and charitable giving argue that people in countries far from our own, people we have never met, should be part of our moral circle. And, more recently, some have argued that people who will exist in the future should also be included, and not only the next generation or two, but all people who live in the future, whether in the next hundred years or the subsequent million years.
‘If you have to choose between doing something that has a small chance of improving the lives of every future person by quite a small amount, or doing something that will certainly improve the lives of all existing people by a very large amount, morality will often demand you do the first thing.’
‘The Foundations of Longtermism’ is a research project funded for three years by the Leverhulme Trust. The project aims to scrutinise an argument that begins with the claim that people in the near and far future should be included in our moral circle. This argument hopes to establish a dramatic conclusion. It points out that there will most likely be vastly more future people than current people. If there are a little over 8 billion current people, there might easily be 8 trillion future people. And if all those future people are in our moral circle, then morality says we must take them into account when we decide what to do. But the sheer number of them suggests that trying to do things that benefit them is a higher priority than doing things that benefit people who are living now. So, the argument goes, if you have to choose between doing something that has a small chance of improving the lives of every future person by quite a small amount, or doing something that will certainly improve the lives of all existing people by a very large amount, morality will often demand you do the first thing. That’s the dramatic conclusion, and it strikes many as implausible. The Foundations of Longtermism considers the various ingredients in this argument and asks whether they stand up to scrutiny: Does morality really require that we weigh up probability of great gains against certainty of moderate gains in the way the argument does? What are the consequences of such a principle, and should we accept them? Must we really include a person living in a million years’ time in our moral circle, and must we give them the same weight we give people with whom we inhabit the world now?
By Sajad Sotoudeh, PhD Film and Television candidate, School of Arts
In the final entry to our series spotlighting PGR summer internship projects, PhD Film and Television candidate Sajad Sotoudeh explains his collaboration with Dr Nariman Massoumi on a film essay that explored the perceptual experience of the flâneur in the metropolis. Flânerie refers to wandering through the modern city, a concept that has intrigued many thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire and Guy Debord.
My collaborative project with Dr Nariman Massoumi centred on two historical figures: Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), a Western writer, and Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (1831-1896), the king of Iran, focusing on their flânerie in London in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Virginia Woolf was an English writer who is considered one of the influential figures of modern literature. She wrote about the experience of the figure of flâneur in the modern city. Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, the monarch of Iran for fifty years, was also a photographer and writer interested in traveling to Europe and seeing the manifestations of Western modernity.
We were interested in drawing on and entangling their unique mobilised gaze of the city into a dialogue or conflict to initiate new interpretations of urban modernity, postcolonialism, and gendered perceptual experience. Our project aims to create a visual impression of their contrasting perspectives as they walk London in parallel, across time and space. Through the meeting of these two historical figures on film, a layered encounter across temporal, gendered, and cross-cultural lines is intended. Using formal experimentation, the film will seek to examine an alternative historiography based on a non-linear approach to uncover neglected moments in the history of everyday life.
In the initial phase, Dr Massoumi and I examined various texts regarding Virginia Woolf and Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, flânerie, perception, gender, and sexuality in the modern city. We shared our findings in numerous meetings, which helped us better understand each other’s perspectives.
Dr Massoumi’s expertise in the cultural conflicts and influences between Iran and Britain and post-colonial studies significantly contributed to solidifying my ideas. Furthermore, his experience in filmmaking, particularly his focus on archival practice research about the history of the British-Iranian confrontation, provided me with invaluable insights into translating theoretical ideas into visual concepts in filmmaking. Acquiring this skill was a significant milestone, as it enabled me to present my ideas in a medium (cinema) that reaches a wider audience. This not only expanded the impact of my work but also provided me with practical experience in the burgeoning field of practice-as-research in academia.
Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in a carriage during one of his trips to Europe.
Since this project is closely related to my dissertation topic on the history of flânerie in Iranian cinema and culture, it has enabled me to study and explore texts associated with the concept of flânerie in greater detail. This PGR Internship has also allowed me to go through my first filmmaking experience in the UK with Dr Massoumi’s guidance, face its challenges, and better understand how films are produced in the UK. These achievements will help me to continue my career path in the field of research as a practice in the future, which can provide me with better job opportunities.
Currently we hope to complete the essay film by the summer of 2025 and submit it to a wide range of international conferences and film festivals.
Sajad Sotoudeh is a PhD Film and Television candidate with research interests in Iranian cinema, haptic perception, gender and sexuality in cinema, flânerie, and urban modernity. To find out more about the project with Dr Nariman Massoumi, contact af23066@bristol.ac.uk. To read more PGR summer internship projects, visit ArtsMatter.
By Calum Sims, PhD Philosophy candidate, School of Arts
In the penultimate entry to our series spotlighting PGR summer internship projects, PhD Philosophy candidate Calum Sims tells us about working with Professor Samir Okashato study the ways biological evolution is explained on social media. Taking for their subject crows, jays and ravens—birds known for their remarkable cognitive abilities—the pair examined Instagram videos to identify evidence for the presence or absence of bias when describing their behaviours, an important question in the study of philosophy of science.
Do you watch shorts and reels on social media? If, like me, you participate in this recently emerging trend, you have likely come across videos of animals. Carrying on the lineage from shows like ‘Animals do the craziest things’ and ‘Animal Planet’, videos abound of animals doing attention-grabbing stuff. Sometimes they’re being silly; sometimes they’re being cute; sometimes they’re being remarkably intelligent. What makes these videos attention-grabbing? What, if anything, do these videos have in common? And, perhaps most importantly, what effect do they have on popular understanding of scientific ideas?
Professor Samir Okasha and I chose to focus on corvids (crows, jays and ravens) because they are both prevalent on social media and a key research topic at the forefront of animal cognition. In this field, researchers document the ‘surprisingly intelligent’ behaviour of corvids and debate the nature of the cognitive machinery supposed to support it.
Corvids engage in a range of behaviours that suggest cognitive similarity to humans. To give a few examples:
They engage in pair-bonding ‘rituals’
They interact with other species for mutual benefit
They cache food in a way that is sensitive to the presence (and perhaps intentions) of members of the same species
They successfully solve multi-step puzzles for food rewards
Debate concerns whether the exhibition of these behaviours warrants attributing human-like cognitive capacities to corvids, and while intellectual currents seem to be moving in the ‘yes’ direction, the question is far from settled. Hence, we were curious to see whether videos of corvids on Instagram reflected this complexity, and hence how they bear on popular understanding of scientific ideas.
It soon became apparent that the videos, which showed animals engaged in surprising and interesting behaviours, contained some well-known biases that traditional biology education normally attempts to mitigate away. In somewhat romantic fashion, the language in the videos treated the animal’s behaviour in anthropomorphic, teleological and essentialist terms: that is, it uncritically assumed that the behaviours on display were caused by the animals having certain intentions and goals and acting for the same sorts of reasons as humans.
This allowed us to connect our research to a prominent debate in the philosophy of science education concerning whether this sort of language use should be conceptualised as ‘biased’. The patterns of speaking outlined above (which, according to the debate, could either be called ‘biases’ or ‘cognitive construals’) lead systematically to errors in biological thinking. Because of this, researchers have traditionally attempted to structure science education in such a way as to eliminate them. However, a growing counter-current argues that these thinking patterns, while sometimes problematic, are a useful and maybe even essential part of human reasoning, to be accommodated by educational strategies rather than eliminated from them.
The novelty of our contribution consists in applying this question to the domain of social media. Here, biases appear to have a dual role: they seem to get in the way of good biological thinking, but they also seem to drive attention and engagement towards scientific topics. So, how do we get the good without getting the bad? A prominent line of reasoning (Coley and Tanner 2012) suggests that supplementing these construals with opportunities for reflection and critical analysis – essentially, asking viewers to reconstruct, query and debate their explanations of behaviour – could improve scientific understanding without detracting from engagement. We concluded by suggesting that such interventions could be made in the descriptions of the videos in question, by pointing to areas of uncertainty in the research field or asking questions to viewers directly.
On the whole, this project was incredibly useful for clarifying the role of social media in science communication and beginning to systematise the contribution of videos to this goal. Going forward, we will continue to look at ways that boosting metacognition can help to promote the benefits outlined above.
Calum Sims is a PhD Philosophy candidate with research interests in animal cognition, metacognition and cultural evolution. To find out more about the project with Professor Samir Okasha and view the data captured as part of the research, please contact cs15522@bristol.ac.uk.To read more PGR summer internship projects, visit ArtsMatter.
By Daniela Rozental, PhD Creative Writing candidate, School of Humanities
In the latest entry to our series spotlighting PGR summer internship projects, PhD Creative writing candidate Daniela Rozental tells us about working with Dr Jo Nadin to explore the role a disabled author’s lived experience plays in their writing. By conducting in-depth interviews with published disabled children’s authors, the research examined key issues such as accuracy and authenticity, ableism and internalised ableism, providing valuable insights that will help empower disabled writers in the future.
One of the key issues I have identified during my practice-led creative writing PhD is my struggle as a disabled children’s writer to find a balance between writing authentically and writing responsibly. My thesis explores my own writing process, but I was keen to look further and hear from other disabled writers.
Over the summer I was fortunate enough to participate in the Arts Faculty PGR summer internship scheme. I knew some other students who had taken part in previous years, but it was only now in the third year of my PhD that I felt confident and prepared enough to apply for it myself. Alongside Dr Jo Nadin, one of my PhD supervisors, we took the opportunity to work on a research project we had both been wanting to undertake for quite some time.
Good Different by Meg Eden Kuyatt, one of the authors interviewed by Daniela & Jo, has been praised for its authentic portrayal of autism, helping young people to appreciate neurodiversity.
Our main goal for the project was to interview disabled children’s authors on their attitudes towards writing stories that incorporate elements of their own lived experiences. We also sought their thoughts on authentic and responsible writing, ableism and accessibility in the publishing industry, and what advice they had to offer other disabled writers. Our topic was unique enough to stand alone from my PhD research, but relevant enough that our findings might inform my thesis going forward, as well as Jo’s own creative and critical practice.
When the internship began we were proactive and eager to get started, immediately getting to work on establishing our research objectives, drafting interview questions, and planning out the best ways to disseminate our eventual findings. It wasn’t long, however, before we reached our first stumbling block –ethical approval.
The internship was my first experience conducting interviews as academic research, so I was learning a lot on the job. The process of submitting an ethics application and waiting for approval took a lot longer than I had anticipated. My advice to future interns conducting this sort of research would be to put in your ethics application before the internship start date in order to maximize your internship experience.
Rapids by Anna Bowles and Cursed by Karol Ruth Silverstein bring attention to the lived experiences of disabled individuals. Both novelists were interviewed by Daniela and Jo.
Nevertheless, once we did receive ethical approval, we immediately got to work seeking participants and setting up interview dates. All in all we were able to secure six interviews (five over video call and one over email). The interview process was the real highlight of the internship for me. It was an honour to meet with our participants and create a safe space for them to share their experiences with us. I felt myself grow in confidence as the interviews progressed, and found myself falling in love with conducting interview research. I would leave one interview buzzing with ideas and eager to get started on the next. We gained some really valuable insights that will hopefully go on to help empower disabled writers in the future.
This research might not have been possible without the internship scheme, and I am very grateful to the Arts Faculty, and to Jo Nadin in particular, for the opportunity to work on something so meaningful.
Daniela Rozental is a PhD Creative Writing candidate, investigating ways for disabled authors to write authentic and responsible depictions of disability in children’s fiction. Daniela and Jo will be presenting some of their findings at Leaf Journal’s ‘On Writing for Young People’ conference (24-25 October). To find out more about the project, contact xs21605@bristol.ac.uk. To read more PGR summer internship projects, visit ArtsMatter.
By Emma Frazer, PhD Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies candidate, School of Modern Languages
To continue our series spotlighting PGR summer internship projects, PhD Latin American Studies candidate Emma Frazer tells us about working with Professor Martin Hurcombe and Associate Professor Fiona Spotswood on their interdisciplinary project, Fostering Inclusivity in Action Sports. With the project at an advanced stage in engaging with audiences beyond academic circles, Emma reflects on the invaluable lessons the experience has offered in developing and presenting her own research.
Over the summer of 2024, I conducted a six-week PGR internship with Professor Martin Hurcombe and Associate Professor Fiona Spotswood. I had previously assisted them with an event called Game On, which involved a documentary-screening and academic discussion group on women’s sports. This internship provided me with the opportunity to continue working with them. They have created a framework that works on Fostering Inclusivity in Action Sports (FIAS), with a focus on women in mountain biking.
My PhD is researching the ways in which playing football empowers women beyond the pitch, exploring the cases of Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, where I conducted my ethnographic research. The FIAS project has also used ethnographic research, and is again exploring women in sports, but it is further along than my own research, which means it has provided me with a really useful insight into how my work could develop in the future.
In particular, during my internship, the FIAS project has been at the stage of working on impact and dissemination by exploring case studies and reaching out to wider audiences. They have been experimenting with different ways to present their findings within the mountain biking community and beyond, including sporting institutions, stakeholders and policy-makers. It has been invaluable to learn how projects can progress from the research stage and be disseminated to a wider audience, beyond academic circles, and how the impact of that can begin to be measured too.
To navigate through the framework, use the grey bar on the right hand side of the screen.
To view the framework in full screen, right click the above hyperlink and select first option.
My internship began with me working with their framework in the form of editing a presentation, as well as a short and long framework. By presenting their work in different formats of different lengths, I was able to see how the work can be adapted depending on the audience and the objective, with varying amounts of detail included. It also showed me the importance of strong, cohesive messaging, as well as clear, actionable goals. From there I developed a two-pager document myself for the project, which can be disseminated to organisations and stakeholders, but which can also be used as a policy brief.
Following the two-pager, I wrote up case studies of different women’s mountain biking organisations who have used the framework. This was a useful process as it showed me how I might include the case studies from my own ethnographic research within my PhD, as well as how they can be presented in the future dissemination of my work.
(L-R) Associate Professor Fiona Spotswood chairs a panel discussion with Sue Anstiss MBE, Aneela McKenna (Mòr Diversity), Aoife Glass, Zoe Woodman and Professor Jean Williams.
Finally, I was involved in the marketing strategy for how to effectively reach different audiences with the framework. Having done some research, it was clear that direct messaging to members of different mountain biking and action sports organisations would be the most effective method. These can range from local groups, such as Women Ride Bristol, to cycling institutions, such as British Cycling. I then reached out through various groups to pass on the framework.
As a result of the internship, I have been able to learn the dissemination process of academic work to a wider audience, as well as how to provide the tools so that the research can have an impact in the real world, and how to measure any impact it might have.
By Peter Baxter, PhD History candidate, School of Humanities
Next in our series spotlighting PGR summer internship projects, PhD History candidate Peter Baxter tells us about working with Professor Hilary Carey and vibrant communities in the London Borough of Brent to co-produce a zine that confronts the legacies of British colonialism. Drawing inspiration from the punk ethos of ‘Do-It-Yourself’ (DIY), the research harnessed grassroots creativity to engage with the British Empire Exhibition, held in Wembley in 1924 and 1925, and spark conversations about decolonisation.
From Action Research to Zine Production
This project stemmed from my involvement in the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) project, ‘Becoming Brent’, which examines the British Empire’s legacy, the realities of racism, and how colonial hierarchies still affect communities today.
My aim for the internship was to apply the D.I.Y. ethic to co-produce a zine with the public and use the activity as a critical examination of colonial legacies, particularly those tied to the British Empire Exhibition. The punk subculture’s D.I.Y. ethic – where stuff is self-made and mutual aid is encouraged against the dogma of market forces – provided the perfect framework for this endeavour. As the punk movement has shown, D.I.Y. media can play a crucial role in agency, social activism and in amplifying marginalised voices in a way that rallies and inspires others.
Public Irreverence zine produced by Peter and his collaborators.
To navigate through the zine, click on the arrow icons in the bottom left and right of the zine.
To view the zine in full screen, click on the icon in the top right of the zine.
The Zine as a Tool for Resistance
Zines are cheap to make. Recycled, found objects, paper and glue can put the power of the press in anyone’s hands. This lo-fi, D.I.Y., assemblage approach not only rips up the criteria of publisher submission rules, it also offers a raw, gritty aesthetic that makes zines tangible, contingent and rebellious. And when created communally something richer emerges.
However, this lack of initial public response did not deter the project. I turned to the Brent Museum and Archives where I accessed oral history recordings. One was of an elderly woman named Margaret Bird, who visited the British Empire Exhibition with her father at the age of 11. Her poignant interview provided inspiration for a zine about butter sculptures which were displayed at the Exhibition. The archive mitigated my failed attempts to engage the community meaningfully at this point. Other zines were produced from ephemera found there.
Butter Sculptures zine produced by Peter and his collaborators.
To navigate through the zine, click on the arrow icons in the bottom left and right of the zine.
To view the zine in full screen, click on the icon in the top right of the zine.
Collaboration with Becoming Brent’s Decolonisation Consultant
During the zine’s production, I was collaborating with Devika, Decolonisation Consultant on the ‘Becoming Brent’ project. We explored ways to bring aspects of the work to the public through learning activities. One significant outcome of this collaboration were some workshops where participants created collages on postcards using facsimiles of original Exhibition postcards and discarded contemporary local newspapers and magazines. This activity symbolised the reclamation of history, transforming colonial imagery into dialogical tools for critique. It significantly deepened the impact with the community ensuring their voices were better represented.
I initially wanted a zine that captured the challenges and complexities of confronting colonial legacies while also celebrating the community’s resilience and creativity. A key strength of this project was the creative input from colleagues on the Becoming Brent project and community members. Future postcard workshops and contributions can now form the collective content of zine production, making it a more collaborative effort.
Postcards in Perspective zine produced by Peter and his collaborators.
To navigate through the zine, click on the arrow icons in the bottom left and right of the zine.
To view the zine in full screen, click on the icon in the top right of the zine.
Building on the Success of Collaboration
Building on the success of this project, I will explore the role of creative learning in heritage engagement, with a particular focus on decolonisation and community storytelling. By continuing to work closely with communities and creative practitioners, I aim to produce a zine that will not only document this journey but also serve as a resource or toolkit for others interested in using D.I.Y. media for community participation.
By Dr Lucy Cramp, Dr Tim Knowles, Professor Ian Bull, Dr Mélanie Roffet-Salque, Professor Richard Evershed, Professor Tim Elliott and Dr Jamie Lewis
A team of University of Bristol researchers, led by Dr Lucy Cramp in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, have been awarded a £1m grant from the AHRC to establish a new Centre for Chemical Characterisation in Heritage Science (C3HS). Bringing together expertise in Archaeology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences, the Centre will help to determine the origin of heritage objects and materials, leading to informed conservation strategies and impactful discoveries about the past.
The University of Bristol have received a £1m capital investment grant to establish a world-leading facility that will welcome diverse research and researchers from across the heritage sector, enhancing its analytical capabilities in the process. New cutting-edge analytical instrumentation for high resolution organic molecular analysis will enable enhanced and reliable identification and structural characterisation of organic compounds in complex mixtures, such as pottery residues and organic components of pigments, binders and balms. A new preparative capillary gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer will facilitate the separation, collection and structural verification of individual archaeological compounds in sufficient quantities for radiocarbon dating, whilst newly refurbished lasers in the School of Earth Sciences will be used for the measurement of isotopic signals from different points during the formation of archaeological teeth at high temporal resolution.
These advancements will be made possible thanks to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) recently announcing a new funding programme to establish infrastructure for heritage science and conservation in the UK. The aim of this programme is to enhance the UK capability and capacity for heritage science, and in so doing, bring new knowledge on heritage collections, buildings, landscapes and data. As part of this programme, AHRC announced a major funding call for host facilities and equipment across the UK, to open up access to specialist knowledge, equipment and collections across the heritage sector.
Dr Mélanie Roffet-Salque (left) and Professor Richard Evershed (right) weigh out powdered pottery sherd for lipid extraction.
Here at the University of Bristol, we have a long history of driving forwards pioneering mass spectrometric methodologies, and have exceptional capabilities for molecular and isotope analyses, in the heritage sciences. We have expertise and infrastructure that spans and integrates three schools and two faculties: the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology in the School of Arts (ALSS), the Organic Geochemistry Unit in the School of Chemistry and the Bristol Isotope Group housed in the School of Earth Sciences (SEng). Facilities include an ultra-compact, high-precision radiocarbon accelerator. The Bristol Radiocarbon Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility (BRAMS) was established by the School of Chemistry as a UoB/NERC/BBSRC-funded national facility in 2016 and is housed in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology. This has led to major methodological developments, including the capability to radiocarbon date individual preserved fatty acids from food residues extracted from archaeological pottery.
Left: Bristol Radiocarbon Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility (BRAMS), led by the School of Chemistry and housed in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology. Right: an archaeological potsherd being cleaned prior to extraction of ancient lipids for analysis.
Across the Schools of Chemistry, Arts and Earth Sciences, we have laboratories and instrumentation for highly sensitive analysis of molecular and isotopic signals held in archaeological materials, including ancient food residues preserved in pottery, climatic signals held in historical parchments, pigments and binders used in works of art and the composition of mummy balms from ancient Egypt. The Bristol Isotope Group uses world-leading mass spectrometric instrumentation to explore intra-lifetime patterns in human and animal diet and mobility from isotope signatures in biological remains. Recent major discoveries by the project team include establishing the palaeoecological range of honeybees exploited by the earliest farmers of Neolithic Europe, Near East and North Africa from beeswax residues in pottery, identifying the earliest-discovered lipid signatures for cereal use, along with milk, from 6000 year old Scottish ‘crannogs’ (artificial or semi-artificial ‘islets’) and the detailed analysis of milk use in prehistory to provide a new theory for its relationship with the evolution of the ability to digest milk (lactase persistence) that exists amongst modern-day populations.
We will shortly be appointing new staff to join the team and over the next 24 months, we will be installing, testing and verifying protocols on our new instruments installed in our laboratories and undertaking refurbishments to existing systems to enhance performance. From 2026 we will be ready to offer access to a facility for single- and multi-molecular and isotope mass spectrometry approaches that can be applied to heritage materials to further understand their composition, origins and age. In addition to the analytical facilities, we will provide access to the latest methods and protocols we develop, as well as providing training, analytical and interpretative support. The ability to coordinate these major types of mass spectrometry analysis will simplify the route to molecular and isotope analyses, unlocking new, ambitious and scientifically-rigorous research on heritage collections.
Dr Lucy Cramp is Associate Professor in Archaeology with research interests in ancient biomolecules, dietary traditions and prehistoric subsistence strategies. The AHRC Centre for Chemical Characterisation (C3HS) is part of the Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme, funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council through the UKRI Infrastructure Fund. To find out more about it, please contact lucy.cramp@bristol.ac.uk. Read our press announcement to find out more about the AHRC investment.
