Archaeology and History Department news -

History and Archaeology Department

Good news

This is my first ‘good news’ research bulletin as Director of Research and Impact for Archaeology and History. 
Prof. Oliver Creighton is DoR for Archaeology and Prof. Catriona Pennel is DoR for HASS (which includes History, English, Law and Politics) in Cornwall.





Three projects Chris is involved in have got seed funding from the GW4 alliance (roughly £3,000-4,000 each). Chris is PI on the one about archiving mental health, and Co-I on the two on mental health in educational settings (schools and universities). Here is the official announcement.

For the one Chris is PI on, he is going to put together a series of online seminars in December 2022 around the theme of archiving and mental health, particularly in relation to the pandemic. The aim is to pull together speakers from across a range of disciplines, sectors, and perspectives to understand what archiving mental health might look like, how to do it in crisis contexts like the pandemic, and what the value of this as a process and set of resources might be. They’ll be open to all so Chris will circulate details to the department closer to the time. Chris and his colleagues are still in the process of reaching out to speakers so if anyone immediately springs to mind for any of these themes, he invites you to get in touch – they are offering honoraria to all participants.

The other two are focussed on mental health in education settings: one is on mental health in schools, where the focus is trying to understand how mental health has been and is being conceptualised and approached in policies and teacher training – Chris is supervising a research assistant who will be trying to do a historical deep dive into this using MO records; the second is on mental health in university settings and is about creating a network across GW4 institutions to try and better understand staff mental health and identify further needs (Chris correctly guesses that the list will be quite extensive).


Chris has also got a small grant funding application I’d put in through the Centre for British Research in the Levant for £1,800 to do some archival work in Geneva on internationalising Palestinian mental health post-nakba, which I’m very excited about.


What a wonderful scholarly community we have here. Let us take care of each other and celebrate our work.

Best wishes,
Nandini

Ryan Hanley and Nandini have designed a module called Introduction to Black British Studies, together with three students, two of them historians – Diana Valencia Duarte (Stacey Hynd’s PGR student, who finished this year), Nour Azzalini-Machacler, who graduated this year, and Malcolm Richards from Education.

Ryan Hanley has also been selected as one of the University’s 6 candidates for the highly competitive Future Leaders Fellowships. In being so selected, he convinced an interview panel consisting mostly of colleagues not from HASS, so Ryan is:  boss.

Fabrizio Ansani’s application for a 2022 Newton International Fellowship has been successful and he shall join us in the Spring of 2023 for two years. 
Fabrizio’s project is on The Medieval Origins of Raw Materials Diplomacy: Saltpeter Trade between Italy and England in the Late Fifteenth Century, a topic which has great interdisciplinary potential, well beyond maritime historians and medievalists, worth mentioning that last month the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has published the first governmental plan about the acquisition of strategic material for industry and defence (UK Critical Minerals Strategy - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).)