So, by way of an update, I recently started working back in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester as a ‘REF Pathway’ Research Associate. Over the next six months (five months now, to be precise), I will be supporting the REF-able academics within the School to write and publish outputs judged to meet the…
Tag: research
New freelance services for museums and heritage, arts and cultural organisations
A quick post about my new freelance services. I’m offering: desk-based audience and content research analysis of audience research data editing and proofreading report writing; and writing and editing of interpretive text Please see the dedicated page on my website for more information. There’s a contact form there too for any enquiries. Image by Janko…
The earliest reference to a person of Chinese origin in Leicester?
The Chinese Giant Rummaging in the British Newspaper Archive has churned up a few more gems. Ostensibly seeking more information about Mr On Lee and his ‘Chinese oath’, I stumbled upon a reference to ‘The Chinese Giant’ (aka ‘Chang woo goo’). ‘Chang woo goo’ or Zhan Shicai to give him his accepted name today was,…
‘Orrible Victorian Deaths
I did a great webinar in the week organised by the British Newspaper Archive, on how to get the best from the BNA. I tried out some of the tips on searches of my home village (Ufford, nr Woodbridge, Suffolk) and found some great stories and several that are very sad and affecting. Those Victorians certainly reveled…
New Chinese Propaganda pages on the British Library website
Great news! The British Library now has an online guide to the Chinese Propaganda poster collection, which includes a downloadable list of posters with their shelfmarks, based on the catalogue I put together at the end of last year.
Draft programme: The Museum in the Global Contemporary: Debating the Museum of Now
The draft programme for the forthcoming Leicester Museum Studies Fiftieth Anniversary Conference is now available on the ‘Global Contemporary’ website (where you can also book a place). Me and Malika Kraamer will be presenting a paper – ‘Unplaced heritage: Making identity through fashion’ – on Wednesday, 20th April, which is based on the chapter we’re…
Academic activities: an update
In the last week I’ve: been on four trains; visited London and Sheffield; given two presentations; re-evaluated my future career plans; and eaten some fantastic food courtesy of the AHRC. Last Monday I travelled down to the British Library once more (but hopefully not for the last time) to hand over the final version of the catalogue…
The British Library’s Collection of Chinese Propaganda Posters: An Overview
My third and final blog post for the British Library’s Asia and Africa blog has been posted. In it I provide an overview of the Library’s collection of Chinese propaganda posters and describe the culmination of my cataloging efforts. It features images from two sets of public information posters that went out of copyright on…
‘Japanese Saris: Dress, Globalisation and Multiple Migrants’
The paper that Malika Kraamer and myself recently published in Textile History is finally available online [requires institutional access]. Based on primary research undertaken for the Cultural Olympiad exhibition, ‘Suits and Saris’, the paper looks at: … the phenomenon of Japanese saris — fashion-forward synthetic saris manufactured in Japan — and Leicester sari shop owners’ role in…
Revolutionary nian hua at the British Library
On a suitably ‘new year’ theme,* my blogpost about a set of revolutionary nian hua prints from 1950 has been posted to the British Library’s Asia and Africa blog. The image is a detail from Jian zheng huan xuan hao ren (建政懽選好人), ‘Good people happily select a government’, by ‘Wulejibatu’ (烏勒吉巴图) of Inner Mongolia (Neimeng, 内蒙]). Revolutionary nian…