{"id":9005,"date":"2026-09-29T13:56:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T13:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/internships\/?p=9005"},"modified":"2026-09-29T13:56:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T13:56:46","slug":"student-case-study-university-of-exeter-special-collections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/internships\/2026\/09\/29\/student-case-study-university-of-exeter-special-collections\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Case Study: University of Exeter Special Collections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Student Name<\/strong>: Suchetana <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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Suchetana working on the collections<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Pathway Programme:<\/strong> Pathways to Arts, Culture and Heritage<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Internship Role:<\/strong> Collections Assistant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Internship Employer<\/strong>: University of Exeter Special Collections<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summary of Organisation<\/strong>: The Special Collections team manages the University’s unique and distinctive collections of archives and rare books, which can be accessed via our reading room, housed in the Old Library. Material in our collections is available for students, staff and external researchers to access\u202fand covers a wide range of subjects with a particular focus on South West writers, Victorian studies, Middle\u202fEast collections and political papers. The collections are used extensively in University teaching and research programmes. We also have strong links with other regional, national and international institutions, engaging in outreach and collaborative projects which benefit both the University and the wider community.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Death of the Author and his Resurrection in the Archive: Reflections on two-weeks of work in the Special Collections by Suchetana Phani<\/strong>‘<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Article by Suchetana Phani who worked for two weeks in Special Collections as part of the Professional Pathways internship programme run by the University. Suchetana is studying for an MA in Magic and Occult Science at Exeter.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone who changed her entire career trajectory and crossed two oceans to land in Exeter after documenting a family archive of my grandfather\u2019s love letters and my great grandfather\u2019s refugee certificate post the 1947 Partition, I am no stranger to the power of stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, access to archives had often been determined by power, social status, education, ownership and access to travel. While most of these factors continue to persist as barriers to archival access in the contemporary era, we exist at a point in history where these narratives are further endangered by factors ranging from storage concerns, loss of physical objects, different kinds of item damage to funding cuts for the Arts and Heritage Sector, and the ever-looming miasma of generative AI ventriloquizing the human experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that didn\u2019t (and still doesn\u2019t) deter me from my goals of working in the Heritage sector to actively participate in preserving human narratives in order to bridge the visibility gap between people and their collective cultural heritage. So, getting the opportunity to work as a Collections Assistant for the University of Exeter\u2019s Special Collections through a two-week internship through the University\u2019s Pathways to Arts, Culture and Heritage Program felt like another step closer to my dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Henry Williamson\u2019s diaries 1930s, EUL MS 43\/add. 3\/Boxes 14-15,\u00a0with permission from the Henry Williamson\u00a0Society<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Me and my fellow Pathways colleague, Sophia were assigned boxes of previously uncatalogued items from the Henry Williamson Archive, with instructions to go through the material and catalogue it as per archival standards. I had been personally unaware of Williamson thus far, but my initial research surrounding his work, which seemed interesting, and his politics, which were less so, had given me mixed feelings about the content with which I was about to engage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I got to work on cataloguing Williamson\u2019s diaries from 1929 to 1975, my emotions surrounding the author became further complicated. Having Williamson\u2019s deeply personal dialogue as the first point of narrative contact brought me into an intensely colourful life populated by several equally interesting individuals. Beyond what was written, I sought to understand subtext as I carefully read entries and noticed shifts in handwriting that coincided with shifts in mood or attempts to be secretive even in the act of documenting one\u2019s life. Even though I began my journey of making notes about the contents of the items with the occasional furrowed brow, phases of \u201cmild\u201d infuriation and a certainty that I would absolutely not relate to any of the material, somewhere along the way I found my intellectual stand-offishness softened by glimmers of fundamentally human experiences like struggle, heartbreak, grief, and loss. Engaging with these documents made me particularly conscious of my politics as a feminist and a neurodivergent woman of colour, which were consistently challenged by Williamson\u2019s individual documented standpoint. However, rather than being an intellectual barrier, these lived experiences combined with contemporary political and theoretical frameworks allowed me to critically engage with nuanced discourses of power through the act of documentation, gender, bodily autonomy, and mental health in Williamson\u2019s historical and socio-cultural context.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Henry Williamson\u2019s diaries 1970s, EUL MS\u00a043\/add. 3\/Boxes 14-15,\u00a0with permission from the Henry Williamson Society<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I looked at the diaries as physical objects undergoing changes through the ages. From changes in branding for individual sellers over the decades to the visual progression of the hardcover clothbound diaries of the \u201930s into the paperback notebooks with spiral binding in the late \u201960s and early \u201970s. The diaries acted as records in themselves that could be used to interpret shifts in demand, development of new products for sale, material costs, inflation, branding and marketing changes in the organisations, and the manufacture and sale of the items. Furthermore, engaging with the physical state of the items allowed me to learn a bit more about conservation as my supervisor, Angela, guided me through processes of documenting and quarantining archival material during conservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two weeks have been immensely insightful. Every working day brought something new for me to learn and reinforced how much archival work genuinely called to me as a labour of love. I was able to catalogue 116(!!) items and re-package them for future scholarly use. I also got to witness the intense care and dedication with which the Special Collections team operated, being especially fascinated by the archival storage infrastructure. As an international student with Indian archival and digital humanities training, the opportunity helped me learn more about how to care for heritage items in a UK context. I learnt how to work efficiently under deadlines and gained confidence with regards to working in a professional environment. Overall, I truly enjoyed my time working at the Special Collections. The Team was especially helpful and welcoming, and I got to learn so much about archival work (and Henry Williamson, whom I knew very little about, by extension!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With special thanks to Angela Mandrioli from the Special Collections team for her constant support and guidance during the project and to the Professional Pathways Team for their dedication to making student employment journeys more accessible.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Student Name: Suchetana Pathway Programme: Pathways to Arts, Culture and Heritage Internship Role: Collections Assistant Internship Employer: University of Exeter Special Collections Summary of Organisation: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2755,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[49],"tags":[225,233,407,427,439,369],"class_list":["post-9005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pathways-to-arts-culture-and-heritage-pach","tag-devon","tag-exeter","tag-pathwaystoartscultureandheritage","tag-professionalpathways-2","tag-professionalpathways2026","tag-uk"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStudent Case Study: University of Exeter Special Collections - 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