Sessions 2 sign up - Day 1 - 15:00 - 16:15

Sessions Available:

There are four options to choose from for the second block of sign-up sessions. The details of all four sessions are below, please use the relevant link to register your attendance for your chosen session via Inkpath. Some sessions have limited capacities, and spaces are available in all sessions on a first-come-first served basis. 

All four sessions run 15:00 - 16:15.

Sign-up 1:  Panel - Words Shape History

This panel presents three different perspectives on the ways in which words have connotations that shape our understanding of the past.

Speaker 1: Anne Nielsen - Presentation - Duplicates: When Museums Do Things with a Word

This paper critically examines the paradox of the word 'duplicate' in the context of museums by drawing on case studies from recent archival research at the British Museum. 'Duplicate' (in its noun, adjective and verb variations) is commonly understood to mean 'copy,' 'identical', or 'double.' In museums, however, this term has historically been used to denote objects that were deemed surplus, replaceable or exchangeable. Such objects were not added to a museum's permanent collections and were instead used in exchanges with other institutions or disposed of in other ways (via sales to generate funds, for example). This once-common curatorial practice enabled museums to expand and diversify their collections, with the practice peaking in the nineteenth century but continuing well into the twentieth century. The ‘matter-of-factness’ (Heumann et al, 2022: 261) of ‘duplicates’ in museums means that this practice remains an underrepresented area of analysis. This paper illustrates how the use of such 'duplicate' terminology can potentially mask, diminish or distort the value and treatment of cultural objects. By analysing the impact and significance of describing and labelling objects as duplicative, the paper engages with the congress question 'do words carry meaning or do they create it?'     

Speaker 2: Tim Jerrome - Presentation - “I am no Oscar Wilde man”: The Words of Queer History Research

Content Warning: This presentation includes historic legal terminology for homosexuality and discussion of the criminalisation and prosecution of gay men.

Our understanding of the past is shaped entirely by the words used to describe it, via archival sources and the work of modern historians. Whilst the adage “history is written by the victors” certainly has truth to it, it is also possible to recover the histories of marginalised people by seeking the right words in the right places. My PhD project – which explores queer histories of rural England, c.1800-1950 – fits into this mould, as much of my time has been spent scouring archives for signs of queerness amongst the words their authors deploy. At a time of criminalisation and stigma, when words written in letters were used to prosecute gay men, finding words from which queerness can be perceived has been a constant challenge. 

In this presentation, I will address the various issues around terminology in my research, such as the language of euphemism and secrecy queer people used to describe their relationships, the words of condemnation and oppression used by the media of the time, the terms used by archives and museums to present queer history documents to their users, and the words I myself use to describe the people I find. Is it, for example, disingenuous to use the word “gay” to describe a 19th-century same-sex couple, when they would never have labelled themselves as such? If so, how can these stories and ideas be communicated to a modern audience?

Speaker 3: Hannah Francis - Presentation - What Makes British History? Representations of Black Political Agency and the National Curriculum

Content Warning: This presentation discusses ofracial discrimination, in relation to migration, access to public services, and uprisings in 20th-century Britain.

The word ‘British’ carries a very specific set of connotations and a very specific identity. To be British is defined as ‘to be of Britain or its people’. But who are the people that make up Britain? The National Curriculum plays an integral part in the shaping of what it means to be British, who gets to claim this identity and who has contributed to its making. Since its implementation in the late 1980s, the National Curriculum has undergone many significant reiterations and changes, most publicly and severely impacting the taught content of History in schools. One of the most significant renewals to the National Curriculum for History was under then-Secretary for Education Michael Gove which saw the omission of Black and Global Majority histories and the positioning of British History as one that was explicitly Eurocentric and white. Following this review, Professor Claire Alexander and Dr. Debbie Weekes-Bernard identified schools as “an ideological battleground for competing versions of ‘Britishness’” (2016, p. 479). The National Curriculum for History became the locus operandi for entrenching what it meant to be British within our education system whilst simultaneously obfuscating the presence of Black voices and political agency within its taught content. This presentation will thus examine how our National Curriculum has contributed to our definition of British and the role of the State in its attempt to maintain an image of national identity that has never truly existed.

Hybrid 

Sign-up 2: Panel - Finding Your Place on a Placement 

Dr Laura Blair, Carmem Saito, Rosalyn Skylar, Hannah Cotterill - Chair: Carol Hughes

Find out how to make the most of Techne’s partner organisations by doing a placement, getting work experience or gaining an internship with one of them or another cultural institution. Techne’s partner organisations include the Science Museum, the National Theatre, the Natural History Museum, Kew Gardens, Historic Royal Palaces and the National Archives.

If you are unsure whether you have the time to do a placement, don’t know how to go about getting or organising one or are not aware of the benefits, this session is a must for you: get into the institution, make connections, develop skills and gain experience while this door is wide open to you.

Dr Laura Blair, Research Manager (Postgraduate and Skills) at the Science Museum Group, will divulge the needs and opportunities that her institution has currently or can foresee and will suggest how Techne students can meet those needs and seize those opportunities. She will offer advice on the skills the Science Museum looks for in applications and will offer tips on how students can highlight their abilities in making targeted applications.

In addition, three current Techne students – Carmem Saito, Rosalyn Sklar and Hannah Cotterill – each of whom has done placements at institutions including the V&A, BBC, and Shakespeare’s Globe will inspire you to apply and give their top tips on how to make compelling applications which showcase your skills and respond to the institutions’ needs and priorities. As Carmem says, her three placements, including an international one, ‘have been the absolute highlight of my PhD experience’ and she is really keen to encourage others to do one.

Dr Laura Gray Blair is a historian, museum professional and rare books cataloguer. She is Research Manager (Postgraduate and Skills) for the Science Museum Group, where she leads doctoral and other academic programmes. Her own research interests lie in the histories of science, technology and medicine and their intersections with print culture and museology.

Carmem Saito is a designer and researcher across fashion and interaction design. As a Techne grantee, Carmem is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for Creative Futures at Loughborough University London. Her research examines fashion consumption in digital contexts, critically analysing how technologies of consumption are imagined, designed, and used.

Rosalyn Sklar is in the third year of her PhD, examining early modern women's practice of medicine. She began her PhD in 2023 from a 16-year career in the museum and heritage sector and has been using the CEA placements to diversify her experience and think about what the opportunities might be for her career in the future.

Hannah Cotterill is a third-year PhD student in the English department at Royal Holloway, researching representations of angry women in early modern medicine and drama. This year, she completed a part-time 3-month placement in the research team at Shakespeare's Globe, supporting across a range of projects from guided tours to theatrical productions.

Carol Hughes, this session’s chair, is Techne’s Senior Administrator (Finance and Recruitment), who is responsible for approving placement applications.

Sign-up 3: The Science of Learning Workshop

Anna Viatova

When teaching, words are never enough; simply hearing something rarely translates to remembering it. In this workshop, I will share a set of tips from teaching/ learning methodology based on education studies, cognitive science, and memory research. The session is built around the book titled Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Brown et al., 2014) and other complementary concepts from instructional design. It is designed to be both practical, with reflection and group work, and rich in theoretical concepts that participants may explore on their own. The aim of the workshop is to boost confidence in those who have not had an opportunity to receive specialised teacher training in  their discipline, with advice applicable to any discipline as the workshop explores fundamental learning principles. The workshop will be perfect for those looking for ways to improve their teaching, while experienced instructors may get a chance to update their knowledge and sharpen their skills. 

Sign-up 4: Ficto-criticism: Between Theory and Practice Workshop

Milo Pissarro

I am proposing a workshop based around my research into ficto-criticism as a methodological practice, exploring ways that creative writing can function within the academy. I wish to run this workshop because, in line with the theme of this congress, I see value in exploring the dialectical power of creative fiction, rather than just considering the aesthetic function of the words on the page. While focusing on autoethnography I discovered ficto-criticism as a means of creating an interdisciplinary dialogue between fiction and philosophy and thus wish to explore these methodological possibilities within this workshop. Simon Robb has defined ficto-criticism as an academically mediated space where, “the scholar does not provide a specific line of argument... but [in the motivation of creative writing] constructs the whole paradigm of possibilities... leaving the act of utterance, specific selections and combinations, to the reader” [Robb 2001]. Helen Flavell concurs, stating that, “ficto-critical writing encourages a reterritorialized subject that crosses the boundary between itself and object of criticism” [Flavell 2004]. There seems to be something inherent in creative writing that allows us to bridge a gap between theory, as academic scholarship, and practice. But what exactly makes this interdisciplinary conversation possible? Is anything lost? Is anything gained? Going forward, how can we use this intersection to create new kinds of discourse? Is it even possible to place fiction (or practice-based research in general) on a par with more traditional forms of scholarship within the academy?