BRITISH ACADEMY REVIEW The British Academy 10–11 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AH ISSN 2047–1866

No. 35 Spring 2019 New Visions

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NO. — SPRING 2019 35 Annabel Tremlett Ash Amin on the on new ways British Academy’s of seeing international Roma people vision No. 35 Spring 2019 The British Academy Officers of the British Academy ISSN 2047–1866 The British Academy © The British Academy 2019 10–11 Carlton House Terrace President The British Academy Review is London SW1Y 5AH Professor Sir David Cannadine licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- The British Academy, established Vice-Presidents NonCommercial-NoDerivatives by Royal Charter in 1902, is the Professor Dominic Abrams 4.0 International License. UK’s national academy for the Vice-President (Social Sciences) humanities and social sciences – The British Academy Review the study of peoples, cultures and Professor Ash Amin contains articles illustrating the societies, past, present and future. Foreign Secretary wide range of scholarship which the British Academy promotes Further information about the work Professor Roger Kain in its role as the UK’s national of the Academy can be found via Vice-President (Research academy for the humanities and thebritishacademy.ac.uk and Higher Education Policy) social sciences. Twitter: @britac_news Professor Aditi Lahiri Views of named writers are the Facebook: TheBritishAcademy Vice-President (Humanities) views exclusively of those writers; publication does not Revd Professor constitute endorsement by the Diarmaid MacCulloch Kt British Academy. Vice-President (Public Engagement)

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Photo taken by John Oates (see article on pages 44–53) British Academy Review Spring 2019 Contents

Rosemary Cramp 26 New tools for new research 58 Academy news 2 On celebrating the stone questions and answers sculpture of the Anglo-Saxons Brett Greatley-Hirsch and James Baker talk to the British Academy Review about the potential of Editorial digital research in the humanities.

‘Global’ Brexit Britain 3 Ash Amin explains the international vision of the British British Academy Academy in a turbulent world. publications

Exploring medieval liturgy 61 On topic in medieval churches Roger Kain 34 John Harper tells a story of Theology and Religious 8 On the history of maps, evidence, imagination and Studies: new inspirations? and mapping the future realisation. Silvianne Aspray, Benjamin Kirby, of the British Academy Judith Lieu and Chakravarti Ram-Prasad discuss past and future directions. British Academy- supported researchers Picturing others 44 Annabel Tremlett illustrates how everyday images can challenge stereotypes of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller people.

XX Recent publications from 66 the British Academy

Language learning: turning 12 From the archive a crisis into an opportunity Neil Kenny and Harriet Barnes The 1949 ‘Palace Revolution’ 68 spell out the British Academy’s at the British Academy call for action. The interviews Coming up Time out! The British Academy 72 Ian Christie 15 Ayşe Üskül and Michelle Ryan 54 Summer Showcase 2019 On understanding film – from applaud the transformative impact Join us this June as we throw the father of British cinema, of the British Academy Mid-Career open our doors for our annual to a new language for new media. Fellowship scheme. two-day Summer Showcase.

1 Academy news Academy news

National academies urge Chris Skidmore MP is ‘Minister Mary Robinson to speak on Government to develop for the Arts and Humanities’ the challenge of climate justice national languages strategy The British Academy has welcomed On 4 June 2019, Former President In February 2019, the British Academy comments made by Universities Minster of Ireland and United Nations High published Languages in the UK: A call for Chris Skidmore in a January 2019 speech Commissioner for Human Rights Mary action, urging the Government, business, at RADA, in which he said ‘I take great Robinson will be at the British Academy policymakers and social organisations to pride in wanting to be Minister for the to discuss our collective responsibility to revive language learning with a national Arts and Humanities’. campaign for climate justice. The event is strategy, to help make Britain and its In response, the Academy underlined part of the British Academy’s season on citizens truly global. the value of the arts, humanities and Utopia or Dystopia – Imagining Futures. Backed by the Royal Society, the social sciences to the nation’s economic, Academy of Medical Sciences, and the social and cultural wealth, stressing Royal Academy of Engineering, the that they are essential to tackling the Brexit British Academy said that the prospect of key challenges of our time, and it said it Brexit ‘makes it even more important for looked forward to working closely with the UK to have the languages needed to the Minister. forge wider commercial and other links.’ For more on this, see page 12 British Academy publishes healthcheck on Theology British Academy says and Religious Studies immigration policy undermines A new British Academy report reveals the academic sector that the number of first-year university Summer Showcase In February 2019, the British Academy students enrolling on Theology and exhibitors announced published two statements calling for a Religious Studies has fallen by a third The British Academy has announced rethink of the Government’s proposed over the past six years, with several UK the 15 humanities and social sciences immigration system, and existing plans university theology departments closing projects chosen to exhibit at its Summer for UK-based EU nationals post-Brexit, or becoming smaller. The findings Showcase, a free festival of ideas for which risks severely damaging the UK’s are of concern at a time when a deep curious minds (21–22 June). higher education sector. understanding of religions could help After the inaugural British Academy Home Office policy direction, it avert sectarian conflicts and attacks, and Summer Showcase in 2018 attracted said, was at odds with the practical also help multi-faith communities to 1,750 visitors, the British Academy will realities of academic structures, and navigate the challenges they face. once again throw open its doors as the could erode the competitiveness and For more on this, see page 8 selected projects’ researchers present attractiveness of UK higher education their work through hands-on activities and research. It highlighted the fact and interactive displays. There will also that six of the top seven disciplines with be pop-up talks and performances, and the highest proportion of non-UK EU hundreds of young students will enjoy a undergraduates are in the humanities free Summer Showcase Schools Day. and social sciences. For more on this, see page 72 For more on this, see page 3

2 British Academy Review Spring 2019 Editorial:‘Global’ Brexit Britain

Ash Amin explains Professor Ash Amin is Head of Geography at the University of the international vision Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2007, and of the British Academy has been the Academy’s Foreign Secretary since 2015. in a turbulent world

3 Editorial

write this wryly on April Fool’s day, when the UK should have started its withdrawal from the EU but has not I done so yet. The sun is streaming in through my window, perhaps because we are still in the EU. I have been asked to reflect on my four years as the British Academy’s Foreign Secretary, and to look ahead to the Academy’s international fu- ture. Well, how to put this with a measure of calm? I would say that our future comes with an unhealthy dose of uncertainty that could be deeply detrimental to the UK’s future in the humanities and social sciences, posing a significant threat to us all in our research careers and personal lives, at a time of already great pressure in the higher education community. And yes, this is the polite version. I might mention the dangers that our disciplines face from the UK’s withdraw- al from the EU – admittedly with some weariness given our repeated attempts to get this message across in the last few years. Our disciplines are world leaders, and we face an unprecedented challenge on a wide range of fronts. Researchers in the humanities and social sciences based in the UK have won more than 33 per cent of all funding given by the European Re- search Council (ERC). This is more than Under the British Academy’s Early Childhood Development programme, Keetie Roelen any other country in any discipline. The (Institute of Development Studies) is leading research that is investigating how economic funding has been a lifeline for collabora- strengthening through comprehensive social protection can effect early childhood tive and larger-scale curiosity-driven re- development in Haiti. Photo: Sung Kyu Kim. search. The UK does very well across the board in the ERC, including the natural counterparts decide on whether the UK be open, inclusive and outward facing’, and physical sciences in which we often will continue to be part of – and benefit ‘resist any sense that Britain will be less lead the pack – but even here the UK has from – the networks of knowledge and ex- engaged in the world in the next few won ‘only’ around 20 per cent of the fund- cellence our EU membership has enabled. years’, as well as have a ‘global presence, ing ever provided. More broadly, there is a major tension active in every region; global interests, Six out of the top 10 UK disciplines we face going forward, with current Gov- working with our allies and partners … with the highest proportions of non-UK ernment policies and messaging. The and global perspectives, engaging with EU staff are in our disciplines, which referendum campaign and its aftermath the world in every area, influencing and also account for six out of the top seven played on deep public concern about being influenced’.2 Fine words, which disciplines with the highest proportion UK national identity, around a host of make me wonder why the concept can- of non-UK EU undergraduates. The at- anxieties, prejudices and illusions that not include continued deep collaboration tracting, nurturing and development of continue to circulate and define diverse with the EU and our European partners. talented academics in the UK will be positions on EU membership. The coun- On the other hand, we have seen the deeply harmed by the UK not being able try remains polarised along the fault lines rise of a language of taking back control, to participate in the ERC in the future. revealed by the referendum, and the divi- border controls and national privileges The value of moving up through nation- sions will not be closed by persisting with for a historic people. This language has al research schemes such as the British the zealous rhetoric and double-speak of profound effects on choices about where Academy’s Mid-Career Fellowships to Brexit.1 and how to live, study and/or work.3 Di- larger ERC awards is clearly shown else- On the one hand, the Government has visive and inflammatory rhetoric such as where in this issue (pages 54–57). We look coined the concept of a ‘Global Britain’, ‘citizens of nowhere’, and an immigra- into an abyss as Parliament and our EU signalling that the UK will ‘continue to tion system that is closing down oppor-

1 Ash Amin and Patrick Wright, ‘Nation on test: Identity and belonging after the EU referendum’ (British Academy, 2018). 2 House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Global Britain: Sixth Report of Session 2017–19, HC 780, ‘Memorandum from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’, pp. 19–20. 3 ‘Statement on the UK’s future immigration system for higher education and research’ (British Academy, February 2019); ‘Statement on the proposed settled status scheme and European temporary leave to remain for higher education and research’ (British Academy, February 2019).

4 British Academy Review Spring 2019

tunities through incommensurate and opening us to the world and vice versa. tionally. inappropriate burdens and barriers for We are for ‘citizens of a somewhere’ that This we have sought to do vigorously. international mobility and collaboration,4 is both here and there, home and abroad, We work closely with the All European are just a small part of a rebuttal of cos- rooted and mobile. Academies (ALLEA), leading its Hori- mopolitanism, liberal thought and free I am sure the British Academy will zon Europe Working Group, to influence movement. These are staple principles for continue its international work as such current and future EU Framework Pro- an organisation such as the British Acad- an advocate. That has been my guiding grammes, engaging with EU Member emy, committed to learning and knowing principle as Foreign Secretary. It is essen- States, the European Commission and the through open engagement, and we will tial that we make every effort to main- European Parliament. We have collabo- find ourselves having to stand up for them tain the UK’s central place in facilitating rated closely with the Royal Irish Acad- more vociferously in the days to come. knowledge and cultural exchange. This emy on a series of ‘Brexit Briefings’.5 We I see these days as turbulent and dark. I is key to ensuring that the UK remains an have also led our community in speaking sense a growing intolerance of critical rea- attractive pole for the very best research- up for our subjects’ excellence as the UK soning, open debate, and cosmopolitan ers and research, in turn ensuring that the withdraws from the EU, including for the thinking in public and political culture, humanities and social sciences continue first time convening all seven national reaching for the comforts of not thinking to enrich and deepen our understand- academies in these islands to speak with too hard. Thankfully the British Acad- ing of the world around us, and making one voice. It is vital that we continue to emy’s international mission, delivered it a better place for us and future gener- lead shared European agendas with AL- through our programmes and activities, ations. Making the case for the indispen- LEA and with other European academies, the diplomacy we engage in, the networks sability of our subjects in a turbulent and and not be cowed by Brexit. This is why we foster, and the ideas and people we fast-changing world requires active work, I am delighted that the British Academy support, remain a beacon for these ideals, including speaking up for them interna- will host the ALLEA General Assembly in

4 ‘The British Academy: current and proposed immigration policy is undermining the academic sector’ (British Academy news release, 22 February 2019). 5 Between October 2017 and December 2018, the British Academy has issued 11 Brexit Briefings. They can be found via thebritishacademy.ac.uk/projects/brexit-briefings.

5 Editorial

the UK in 2020. laborate with the Foreign Office, the De- ings and expert roundtables with partners Using our convening power, we have partment for International Development in India and China, and through work worked to sustain and extend the UK’s (DFID) and the Department for Business, with partners in Africa we will play our European and global engagement and Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) part in capacity-building there and more collaborations, and to bring together per- amongst others to bring our subjects to broadly in the Global South. spectives on global challenges from across bear on topical matters. Through the Se- Our five international thematic prior- the world. We collaborate with our Euro- ries, we have helped, for example, to ex- ities – Conflict, Stability & Security; Ur- pean and US partners on a stream of activ- amine the impact of China’s ‘One Belt One ban Futures; Justice, Rights & Equality; ities related to truth, trust and expertise, Road’ policy from a South Asian perspec- Europe’s Futures; Knowledge Frontiers which aim to make the case for the im- tive. – have been fundamental to our interna- portance of expertise and evidence-based Future plans aim to enhance further tional partnerships, but they also address thinking today. Our own expertise and our international partnerships and lead- global challenges and influence interna- convening power have proved critical in ership, by scaling up our bilateral, regional tional policy debates. For example, some helping to develop dialogue on key ques- and global partnerships with academies, research funded under our The Humani- tions for the future of UK research. With leading universities and other research ties and Social Sciences Tackling the UK’s our International Forum Series, we col- partners. This will include research meet- International Challenges programme, has

Under the British Academy’s Cities & Infrastructure programme, Philip Rode (London School of Economics) is leading research on the governance of urban infrastructures interfaces in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa in Ethiopia. Photo: Charlie Rosser Photography.

6 British Academy Review Spring 2019

created a toolkit on safeguarding children To attract the best scholars from across countries to work with UK partners. Pro- from sexual exploitation in peacekeeping the world and to promote international grammes such as these ensure that the UK operations, which is being utilised by the researcher mobility, we are building in- remains central in global networks; and UN Missions in Haiti and the Democrat- ternational collaborative links through a we are expanding these further through ic Republic of Congo, and has also been series of early career researcher sympo- our new Global Professorships, which pro- adapted by the African Union, the OECD, sia. We have successfully delivered sym- vide world-leading academics an oppor- and DFID. posia in Boston, Delhi and Johannesburg tunity to work in the UK for four years to In work supported by our Cities & with local partners in the last year or so. develop cutting-edge research and lasting Infrastructure programme, teams of ar- The UK-US collaborative seed funding collaborations. chaeologists, engineers, architects and from the first workshop has already been The years ahead are going to be a scientists have identified monuments in developed into a significant new research bumpy ride, no doubt punctuated by Nepal that are likely to be endangered fol- project for one group, led by a former Brit- more politeness on our part, but I hope lowing the two major earthquakes there ish Academy Postdoctoral Fellow with also the urgency to proclaim our cosmo- in 2015, and helped authorities to change expertise in literature, on the visualis- politan commitment. I don’t think it naïve the way in which they address conserva- ation of gender-based violence in graphic to believe that the British Academy has tion.6 As another example of this critical awareness campaigns in Nepal. We wish the platform and levers to play a crucial interdisciplinary approach, our Knowl- to expand these symposia to ensure that role in shaping an existential future that edge Frontiers programme has brought early career researchers can engage with is safe, knowledgeable and congenial. We together psychologists, geophysicists, counterparts across disciplines and bor- are an important voice for our disciplines, geologists, city authorities, emergen- ders, so that the UK remains central to the for their civilisational worth, and for the cy managers, architects, artists and lo- next generation of cutting-edge ideas. We internationalism they require. In the last cal communities to raise awareness and have already additional funding to do so few years we have considerably expanded preparedness about the Lembang Fault in the Global South in the coming years, the Academy’s international reach and in Indonesia, which has been recently and we are looking to scale up this activity profile – in the last five years we have in- recognised as active and capable of ma- across the rest of the world too, with plans creased our annual international funding jor earthquakes. All of this research has progressing with partners in Germany, from some £6.5 million to around £20 helped improve not just understanding Australia and Ireland. million today – through more research of vital questions, but also timely interna- We continue to invest in the best re- programmes, fellowships for UK and tional policy engagement and impact. For searchers in the UK and worldwide. Our overseas researchers, early career and ex- example, five of our award holders in the Newton International Fellowships enable pert symposia, country partnerships, and DFID-funded Tackling Slavery, Human early career researchers to come from various efforts of ‘science’ diplomacy. Trafficking and Child Labour in Modern anywhere in the world to the UK for two I feel compelled to close, as a settled Business programme have been included years, with five years of follow-on fund- migrant vexed by the growing public in the annual UK Top 100 Corporate Mod- ing. Our Visiting Fellowships have provid- animosity towards the stranger, by de- ern Slavery Influencers’ Index.7 ed opportunities for 89 academics from 34 claring that the British Academy has the power to resist the devastating mischief that is afoot. We have the means to artic- ulate a vision and set of actions, rooted in research in the humanities and social sciences, showing the value and necessi- We have the means to ty of a public culture of engagement with the stranger and of openness to the world as the confident way of negotiating uncer- articulate a vision, rooted in tainty and turbulence. I am comforted to know that my suc- the humanities and social cessor as the British Academy’s Foreign Secretary, Simon Goldhill, shares this sciences, showing the value view. It has been a privilege to work for the British Academy, and even more so with its international staff led by Philip and necessity of engagement Lewis and overseen by Vivienne Hurley. What a formidable, dedicated and re- with the stranger and of sourceful team! openness to the world.

6 See Caroline Knowles, ‘Cities and infrastructures: A view from Kathmandu’, British Academy Review, 33 (Summer 2018), 27–31. 7 For more on this programme, see Brad Blitz, ‘Tackling modern slavery in modern business, British Academy Review, 32 (Spring 2018), 27–29.

7 On topic Theology and Religious Studies: new inspirations?

Silvianne Aspray, Benjamin Kirby,

Dr Silvianne Aspray is a British Academy Judith Lieu and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. discuss past and future directions © The British Academy

Dr Benjamin Kirby is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of Science at the University of Leeds. he origins of the university system a constant thread throughout the history in the West are inseparable from of Christianity (and not just of Christiani- the study of Christian theology ty), and is one of the hallmarks of TRS. Yet T – usually designed for the more increasingly we are not excavating these advanced education of clergy and monks. texts for their ideas or the story they tell, In that context, the question of God was but locating them in much larger stories. a necessary and invariable part of the Dr Silvianne Aspray explained, ‘One of question of how we understand the world the things that excites me about my re- and ourselves, even of what it means ‘to search, and in general about the way that Judith Lieu is Lady Margaret’s Professor know’. In the contemporary world, espe- philosophical theology is explored in this of Divinity Emerita at the University of cially in the West, ‘the question of God’ country, is how I am encouraged to com- Cambridge. She was elected a Fellow of is no longer self-evident, and indeed is bine a detailed case study of a histori- the British Academy in 2014. regarded by many as alien to our task of cal thinker and historical sources, with the pursuit of knowledge. Yet what is now thinking about what implications they called ‘Theology and Religious Studies’ have for bigger narratives, such as about (TRS, on which more below) continues what makes modernity “modern”.’ to excite, way beyond the confines of the With reference to her own work on earliest clientele. Two aspects of this were Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), she said: explored in a pair of recent conversations, ‘The way in which we perceive reality in each between a senior academic and a re- our time – for example, that the world searcher near the beginning of their aca- can be imagined regardless of whether it demic career. has some kind of origin, or goal beyond Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad is itself – is not the only possible way. This Distinguished Professor of Comparative What religious texts do, becomes clear to me time and again when Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster and not just what they say I read someone like Cusa, who could not University. He was elected a Fellow of The close reading of texts, especially texts think of reality apart from its relation- the British Academy in 2017. that deal in some way with God, has been ship to God.’ It is not just a matter of how

8 ------9 . In texts through This is true more widely. We have very have We widely. This is true more work my continued,Judith ‘Recently Of course, per this emphasis on the - British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British things. One way do things. One way communities. Texts look recognising that at that is by that we gospel and is a narrative; like John’s a text works that narrative how can explore we identify to the readers inside, invite to with characters, be to shaped the plot, by sides take to the au- or claim insight when or double entendre.’ thor uses irony limited access realities the historical to behind texts, but no doubt the they were reading much messier; are the texts we be distorting the reality and projectmay used ‘We ing what they hope generate. to lookto at (other) early Christian texts as infor- the sourceideas of or as providing mation about what people thought at that structured, was the Church or how stage, read texts we something like that. Now they of “how in terms were much more trying shape to new?” something that was peopleWhen became Christians, they did not becomesomething that already making. the in existed. Christianity was seeking were the early texts And therefore com- to and shape individuals to give to use modernthe jargon, munities.they To identities”.’ “shaping were has been on the emergence of the idea of not true a preformed was There heresy. out of what is belief start. the from Rather, a swirling experimentation with probably ideas, a process by texts develops through which notions of true belief and wrong or belief boundaries emerge, drawn are experimented with, outsiders cas are It is a processtigated. practice, who believed who practice, in what what and numbers lost is largely us.’ to of texts is not peculiarformativity TRS: to in the discipline how it shows is always other with disciplinesconversation – lit erary studies or classical studies be to explored this conversation gin with. Yet aboutwhat it is that is distinctive the in which we read or the context texts we suggest Silvianne read them. ‘Perhaps,’ ed, ‘this kind of focus is particularly pro nouncedbecauseTRS in challengethe of been talk or think to theology has always about something the reach that is beyond “the transcend- of language in some way, this understanding is always There ent”. use talk about we to words that, whatever just scaffolding, they are the divine, and climb the scaffolding,while we it also Languagefalls down. that starts the from things that can be seen and touched has besomehow to when applied stretched to - - This should make us rethink other make us rethink This should their to do, texts what to attention This ‘performativity’, is something that runs ‘performativity’, own across TRS. Professor Lieu’s Judith and the early Testament New on the work a similar trajectory. has followed church ‘When I started lifelong close my study Gospel, people about thought of John’s I as picking out the ideas.reading texts So, might ask, “What about does say this text about does what God? say this text Or, God?who Jesus to relationship is in What Now, about doessalvation?” say text this way the to attention more much pay we that texts shape and shape individuals classicpre-modern proofs– texts God,of ‘Therefor instance. modern is a long tra- authorstheir if them as reading of dition saying, “Withwere thesetricks clever ex the I can prove of thought and word, But perhaps someone God.” of istence Anselmlike of Canterbury meant never be argument to his ontological read that think, now he want as many Rather, way. ed get ponder to his readers to about the God. of perceiving problem The neutral, detached, sceptical standpoint is a very modern thing.’ habits of your mind.’ habits of your - - This closeThis sourc of historical reading - Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), from a painting from Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), Virgin. of the of the Life the Master by thing,expect we somethat prop of kind to ositional knowledge is being conveyed stand somewhat outside the text, us. We This observersneutral as and receivers.’ stands some in contrast to that of the texts ‘They want pre-modernity. read from we somethinghappen to the reader in a to that in a way embodiedmuch more way, actually guides thinking and the readers’ most example, pre-modimagination. For - do not try be to ern texts about prayer in talking neutral and detached. Rather, the texts about the importance of prayer, They prayer. a into lead you to want may try imagination, or the shape to your may such ideas have evolved and changed, and but evolved such ideas have also- and far reach of the fundamental for the understandinging-implications take for of ourselvesof reality that we and granted. es also challenges us with very different models what is entailed of in ‘thinking’, under- with very different and therefore standings should be texts of how read, - Silvi than those take for granted. For we stancenormal the is time, our ‘in anne, of ourselves think to as readers who are read somesomehow neutral. When we

© The British Academy On topic

time of religion by human actors, and his work similarly promises to destabilise long-established Western understandings of the divine and the world. In this he signals how ‘Religious Stud- ies’ has been transformed over the 50- odd years of its existence. As Professor Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad observed, ‘When the study of religion became a kind of conversation partner with the existing discipline of theology, there was an idea that we ought to study religions that are not Judeo-Christian in the same way as we study it,’ because it was assumed that to do so was ‘objective’ or ‘neutral’, as if ‘the Western gaze somehow was outside the picture.’ In the context of the mid-20th centu- ry, awareness of the social conditions and challenges that societies elsewhere in the world were facing, and that immigrants from there were facing in the West, often provoked a ‘collapsing of religion and so- ciety into one trope of backwardness.’ Do- ing so flattened the differences between religious traditions past and present and how they might be critically analysed, and the contemporary societies in which With the nearby mosque at capacity, Muslim men in the Kariakoo district these occurred. It ignored ‘the way in of Dar es Salaam perform Friday prayer (swala ya Ijumaa) in the streets. which, in practice, ancient texts and an- Photo: George Gasto / Rehoboth Pictures. cient practices have been pluralised and have been integrated, and have perhaps God. Theological writers in the past have people live and behave in very profound been forgotten’ – for example, in modern been very aware of that, and have been ways, with consequences that effect the India, one of Ram-Prasad’s areas of inter- trying to get around it by ways of speaking lives of those who have little direct inter- est. In Religious Studies that means over- that are not just providing the right bits of est in religion. It is important to be able to coming the separation between ‘textual information, but are more performative, analyse what is going on in texts, without specialists’ and those ‘who have been out and are trying to shape imaginations and suggesting that this means undermining in the battlefield’, and developing a more habits.’ the authority of those texts. Obviously, integrated exploration of how what is ob- Silvianne agreed that, in terms of there are always those who do feel threat- served is ‘informed by the unseen histo- method, she could do her work in a histo- ened when you analyse texts that talk ry of religion that plays such a living role ry of philosophy faculty, but a faculty or about God, particularly if they are part of in what people do today’, something that department of TRS does offer something the sacred scriptures. However, the ability will include their dynamic re-negotiation distinctive: ‘All my colleagues working in to analyse texts that talk about God with- of ancient texts. the Divinity Faculty, as diverse as their out colleagues thinking that this is doing When Ben undertakes his ethnograph- methods are, are united by an interest something weird, or something that isn’t ic work in Tanzania, he is adopting a very in God, and in what thinking about God open to proper analysis, is something that different lens and set of questions from does to language, to communities, to we can do in a department of Theology that earlier model. He is asking how does knowledge, to texts.’ and Religious Studies.’ religious identity work; how does it ‘facil- Judith’s experience, which includes itate interactions’? ‘Muslim fashion, par- having worked in a department of ancient Embodying religious ticularly among men in informal market history, is much the same. ‘What is dis- identities in social contexts districts, acquires an almost infrastruc- tinctive about working in a department of Dr Benjamin Kirby’s research explores tural quality, in that it allows people to theology and religious studies is that it is how ‘religion might be integral to some of create platforms that enable them to en- acceptable to use all one’s critical analysis the processes that are unfolding in urban gage with strangers. A performed Muslim for texts that talk about God, and actually African settings.’ He focuses on the way identity can protect informal workers to see God as part of the players, actors, that Muslim and Christian identities op- from the negative attentions of the po- or topics of these texts, without thinking erate as part of everyday street life in East lice.’ Spaces, such as mosque complexes, that to do so treads on dangerous ground.’ African cities. Although worlds away from and how they fit into urban architecture, This is highly relevant in a contemporary Silvianne’s concerns, he also talks about are part of this. This can work differently context. ‘Religious texts shape the way embodiment and performativity, but this for Christians and Muslims in the same

10 British Academy Review Spring 2019

setting. with these and adapt to them.’ of none’, although most do find them- More tentatively Ben suggested that Ram-Prasad offered a related exam- selves learning new methods throughout similar observations might be made in a ple. When the Ugandan Asians first came their career. Highly developed expertise UK setting, for example between Muslim to this country, no distinction was made is as important as ever – if not more so and Christian Nigerians, and the possi- between Muslims and Hindus; they were – whether in ancient and modern lan- bilities that religious spaces or patterns Gujarati Indians. In time, ‘global chang- guages, philosophical reasoning, social of observances offer them and how they es to the salience of Islam as an identi- scientific methods, fieldwork skills, his- are played out in daily lives. ‘People are ty, not about culture but something that torical analysis, and so on. As elsewhere very proficient at performing different wove together people from different back- in the humanities, multi-disciplinary col- forms of religious identity in the everyday grounds, have had an effect on Gujarati laboration may more and more become settings of their social worlds.’ He sees Muslims.’ And different forces have im- the norm – ‘simply as a consequence of among his African-born friends in the UK pacted on Gujarati Hindus. This has led the need to understand complex issues that ‘the everyday enactment of a Muslim to divergences which extend to the jobs that have become incapable of being un- identity carries a very different kind of people go into, their holiday destinations, derstood by any one human being,’ said potency from that of a Christian identity.’ their language about the country in which Ram-Prasad. ‘Decentring where we are Once again, these specific case studies they now live. coming from and not privileging any one open the door to reflection on bigger nar- These lines of development in the sort of experience is one of the most excit- ratives. Ram-Prasad noted how the rise of study of religion again open up debate ing dimensions of growth.’ criticism of ‘multiculturalism’ and of the about where such research is undertaken. In April 2019, the British Academy has policies to address it in the UK has shown Ben’s own career illustrates this. Having published a report of Theology and Reli- little awareness of other periods in history started with a conventional text-based gious Studies provision in UK Higher Edu- and places – such as India, which ‘as a po- course at Oxford, he later undertook a cation. That report demonstrates changes litical entity has always been fundamen- masters’ degree in Religion and Public in provision and in its pattern, and neces- tally polycentric and pluralised, and has Life at the University of Leeds; but as sarily concentrates on statistical analysis always had to have peoples of different his interests developed, he found few of contexts which are identifiably centres religions and languages and ethnicities obvious conversation partners, except of the discipline. It reveals how the study circulating around.’ A more nuanced un- among a few anthropologists of religion. of religion is becoming more dispersed, derstanding of the relationship between Research in other fields, and particularly diverse and international, and with fewer religion and identities, and daily perfor- that of urban studies, seemed more vital students in the traditional TRS depart- mance and living together, will be crucial and imaginatively engaging. Yet within ments at public universities. This not ‘if the Britain of the 21st century is to be African Studies he also encountered a (re- only reflects the changing relationship able to reconceive itself’. vealing) concern that studying religion in between society and the question of God Recent research in Religious Studies an African context is necessarily going to explored here, but also the changing na- takes this on board, as it has moved from be a patronising exercise. ture of our universities in a time of mass being ‘a particular way of looking at the What emerged from their conversation higher education. world you go to’, to recognising that ‘un- was that those who study religions may Although this report and the conver- derstanding what is going on around the have very different areas of focus, com- sations recorded in this article were con- world is necessary for us rather than a gift pletely different regional and temporal ceived as independent exercises, reading to them.’ Although the university systems interests, and different religious tradi- them together highlights the challenges and institutions in these other parts of tions, but overlaps emerge in the shared and the excitement of the field, and, it is the world may not always have the infra- challenges that come from trying to ac- to be hoped, will provoke further conver- structure and robustness of our own, their count for the ways in which ‘the idea of sations in which the British Academy will intellectual sophistication is not in doubt, the religious has been figured in different be keen to participate. and they are developing models from settings, and particularly the influence which we can learn. of Western ways of framing religion and The two conversations were Ben recognised this within his own the contemporary salience of religious convened and edited by Judith Lieu. intellectual experience, particularly in identities.’ As Ben said, when specialists debates about what constitutes ‘religion’. in religious studies engage with other ‘The enduring potency of particularly disciplines or subject areas, ‘scholarly re- Western European Protestant notions of flection is often directed at troubling or what religion constitutes shapes our own disturbing either the absence of religion assumptions about what should consti- in accounts of certain phenomena, or the tute other groups’ religious identities. way it is positioned in relation to other This country has a very distinctive ex- phenomena.’ Further reading pectation of what religious others should look like, and how we should treat those Reflections The British Academy’s report on who fail to live up to that standard, which Both these conversations show how schol- Theology and Religious Studies simply does not map onto other settings arship on religion is, and will increasing- provision in UK Higher Education, where I have done research. In response, ly be, multi-methodological. That does published in April 2019, can be religious others in settings like the UK not mean that those involved in it must found via thebritishacademy.ac.uk/ have to perform their identities in concert become ‘Jills of all trades and mistresses theology-religious-studies-UK

11 On topic Language learning: turning a crisis into an opportunity

Neil Kenny and Harriet Barnes spell out the British Academy’s call for action © The British Academy anguages come in all shapes and German A level in Wales in 2018? A mere forms – spoken, written, and sign; 70. With statistics like these, no one would modern and ancient; UK-indig- deny that language learning is in crisis. L enous, European, Asian, Middle But, in a world where advances in ma- Eastern, African, indigenous American. chine-learning technology are improving But the UK has two problems with lan- Google Translate, and the Duolingo lan- guages. First, many people emerge from guage learning app is reported to have Neil Kenny is Senior Research Fellow formal education with a lifelong English 300 million active users, does the weak- at All Souls College, Oxford. He was monolingualism. The more disadvan- ness of language learning in formal edu- elected a Fellow of the British Academy taged their background, the more that cation really matter? in 2011, and is the British Academy’s happens. It means they miss out econom- Google Translate certainly might help Lead Fellow for Languages. ically, culturally, and cognitively. Second- you a bit with communication in situa- ly, even where multilingualism does sur- tions where big errors don’t matter. But round us in the UK, as it does especially Google Translate doesn’t profoundly en- in cities, we too often see it as a problem rich your brain, your cultural understand- rather than as an under-exploited asset. ing, your capacity for empathy, in the Things are, in many ways, getting even way that language learning does. Google worse. The number of students studying Translate doesn’t give you a window into modern languages at undergraduate level other worlds, broaden your mental hori- has fallen by 54 per cent since 2007–08.1 zons, make you more likely to be curious In the same period, at least 10 universi- and respectful when encountering other Harriet Barnes is Head of Policy ty modern language departments have cultures and communities. Nothing beats (Higher Education & Skills) at the closed, and another nine have signifi- language learning when it comes to pro- British Academy. cantly downsized. Fewer than half the ducing a mindset of cultural agility that is pupils in English secondary schools take highly valued by employers in an increas- a GCSE in a modern or ancient language. ingly global labour market. It enables Half of sixth-form colleges in England people to navigate through unfamiliar en- have stopped offering at least one modern vironments, sensitive to differences in so- language A level. And can you guess how cial norms – skills vital in business as well many secondary school pupils studied as in more formal diplomacy. And this

1 HESA Student Record accessed via Heidi Plus online analytics service. Copyright HESA Ltd. Neither HESA nor HESA Services Limited can accept responsibility for any inferences or conclusions derived by third parties from data or other information obtained from Heidi Plus.

12 - 13 Further reading Further statement, The British Academy’s A call for in the UK: Languages 2019, action, published in February via thebritishacademy. can be found ac.uk/publications/languages-uk- academies-statement and further evidence to Links in the online available are reading available of this article, version via thebritishacademy.ac.uk/ publications/british-academy- review/35 The UK has the potential become to British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British mentary schools- has little public visi actively and some may children bility, conceal their abilities, feeling- them irrel or embarrassing. is clearly an There evant this, joiningeducational up dimension to such learning with mainstream schools. But a co-ordinated languages national strategy goes which across government departments be would an opportunity to that these the role develop languages can in building social cohesion,play and in accessibility public servicesimproving to courtsthe as such policing system, and health better quality interpreting through and translation. achieve But to a linguistic powerhouse. this, concerted action is needed. There signs that the momentum is building. are must capitalisethe opportunityon We this presents. - The UK is a mul linguistic capacity. UK’s linguistic but this extra tilingual country, ‘heritage’ competence in ‘community’, languages recognised.or ‘home’ is rarely The language learning that goes on in thousandscomplementaryof supple or ------But they do indicate where there is there where indicate do they But Otherbodies ArtsThe acting are too. of activity doesThis concentration itself now is Academy British The a key finding of the BBCre Finally, search that, while numbers was taking and GermanFrench fall, continue to has beenthere an increase in the uptake – and alsoSpanish of of other languages, such as Portuguese, Rus Polish, Arabic, of this changessian and Chinese. None numbersthe fact very are low. that overall And the numbers these studying less tra- ditional languages very are small in abso terms. lute hugeuntapped potentialboost to the suggestedteachers believe stu- that many languages from be dents turned are away cause they perceive them to be them to difficult. cause they perceive Action is needed rectify to that percep and graded fairly taught well tion. When languages no are severely), (rather than thaneasier difficult sub or more other jects. and Humanities Research Council has million in the Open £16 World invested series a of four majorResearch Initiative, programmes the crucial show aiming to in contempo languages which role play rary issues, evidence which is showcased of Languagesin their recent Power report. seembe to bearing fruit. The issue is certainly attracting within attention In the last and Whitehall. Westminster seen questions and have we few weeks bothin Commonsthe debate, the and Lords, on the need for a strategy (though - solelydisappointingly in rela answered modest policy relatively tion to actions for secondary education in England), on actions address to the fall in numbers in supply the education,higher how on and and the op of teachers interpreters and portunitiesbewill study abroad year for maintained sys in the new immigration tem. partners with working with interests across education flesh the system to out educationthe what partskills and na- a of strategytional languages for might look can build on seeing are we how We like. existing structures– such and initiatives policy as the ScottishGovernment 1+2 opportu- every pupil should have (where languages learn two nity to in addition to their mother the MFL Mentoring tongue), SchemeUniversity, pioneered Cardiff by and the MFL Centre for Excellence and associated school hubs central which are the Pedagogyto Pilotfor secondary edu- cation in England. ------And a few days earlier, the BBC earlier, And a few days Over a few days in late February and in late Over a few days Our call aligns closely with a propos So should be taking steps we re to al, published a few days later by the All by later al, publisheda few days PartyParliamentary Languagfor Group - Programme Recovery es,a National for for Languages. Nia The APPG, by chaired Griffith MP and Baroness Coussins, has goals in set meetUK’s out a vision ‘to the businesssociety government, and civil by countrybuilding a language skills where speaking where one than more valued; are language languag- is the norm; and where class,es world education are and training equipping and next genera the current - tions with the right language skills for the future.’ launched the findingsresearch, of itsown which elicited responses half over from the secondary schools in the UK. It pro vided further evidence of the decline in numbers of students taking languages, and consequently the reduction of pro within schools.vision findings The BBC’s verse becoming what risks an inescapable The good spiral. news is that downward appear bewe to is at a point there where coalition of voices pressingfor a growing action. full were the air waves early March 2019, theseof pub Academy British The voices. lished Languages a statement, UK: in the gained the In this we action. for call A support national academies of our sister for science, medicine and engineering to adopt- call upon to and im government strategya national plement languages.for set the UK’s for how out the evidence We lack of language skills has resulted in the loss social, of economic, cultural and re search opportunities. the example, For economic cost of lost terms in trade and has been perinvestment estimated at 3.5 £48 cent of GDP (around billion a year). argue that the task of making the UK’s We language fit for purpose capacity cannot be education solved through policy alone, but requires joined-up a across approach departments,government and also across administrations of Northern the devolved ScotlandIreland, and Wales. moted by the British Academy have long have the British Academy moted by that deep research of and study shown languages,into modern ancient, go and personalbeyond benefitto increase the knowledgesum total of human about both and our past. the modern world cognitive flexibility has also cognitive been shown beto beneficial mental our long-term to disciplines numerous pro health. Finally,

© The British Academy © The British Academy

The Ian Christie Cramp Rosemary Kain & Roger with For more information on information more For please visit: our interviews thebritishacademy.ac.uk/british- academy-review-interviews 14

The interviewsThe interviews 15 British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British Film was an importantFilm was The part of our culture. We I abandoned English, but stuck with philosophy. published some of the poems that appeared in his debut by , along with work collection, Death of a Naturalist Bernard and others McLaverty Michael Longley, Parker, less famous today. Film Society veryshowed traditional, and was Queen’s Bergman classics and other approved of the period. less and showed edgier, Club was Cinema The New The first betweenmainstream the two. things. I was on probably was piece of writing I published Queen’s at also . But I was following The Virgin Spring Bergman’s other because new developments, a lot going was there New quartersFrench different – not the only on in many but cinéma verité, and in Eastern Europe too. Wave, Bordet, François lecturer, had a very inspiring young who had come out of phenomenology and existentialism the cold shock before encountering of ultra- in France, England. In his philosophy when he came to analytic he had fused them, and I became a product way own of do a PhD to University the new Warwick to that. I went , Interest On understanding film – from film – from On understanding cinema, to British of the father media new for language a new Ian Christie is Anniversary Professor of Film of Film Professor Ian Christie is Anniversary at Birkbeck,and Media History University of the a Fellow elected He was of London. in 1994. British Academy Ian Christie

That same year, I went to Queen’s University Belfast, University Queen’s to I went That same year, I grew up in Northern Ireland on the outskirts Ireland up in Northern I grew of Belfast. so as a a lot do socially to or culturally, wasn’t There main the cinema: my towards I gravitated youngster matinee. going the Saturday to activity was recreational at the When I was life. Films loomed large in my quite a piece I wrote for the school Academy, Belfast Royal magazine – I came across – called ‘The it recently artwas the only form that film saying Art’, Liveliest and kicking, all a bit alive and the othersthat was were was 17. 1962, when I been in ossified.would have This a by surrounded read philosophy and English. I was to range – a generation of writers remarkable that is now much discussedresearched. and As of the editor the magazine that Stewart Parker had created, I felt I had Parker had created, the magazine that Stewart rejectto a couple of Seamus Heaney’s poems: he wrote some poet rather lame ones, as every young does. But we Is there anything in your background that that background in your anything Is there end would suggested you that might have film studies? in up working

© The British Academy interviews The interviews

on the potential crossover between European and Anglo- public meeting he held on campus on the morning after American philosophy: it was conceived as ‘Merleau- the Greek colonels’ coup in April 1967, at which he gave Ponty meets J.L. Austin’, which I still think might be an an impassioned speech about how we should all resist it. interesting project. Through Edward and Stuart, I got involved in the May I continued to do a lot of things connected with film. Day Manifesto; and for the 1968 Penguin Special version, I was invited back to Queen’s to give a talk about film for edited by Raymond Williams, I contributed a section on the Extramural department; and it was in extramural ‘The Cold War moves outwards’, based on my research departments and Workers Educational Association into the origins of the Greek coup. So there was an branches that a lot of early film education began. In extremely lively political context in Warwick, and when those days, there was no organised study of film: we 1968 took off in a big way I became very much caught up were all self-appointed experts, picking up information in it. Philosophy research retreated into the background, where we could, and above all developing our analytic and after a motorbike accident that put me out of action skills by viewing and discussing wherever we could. In for a while, the idea of getting the thesis done in a the mid-60s, with ‘new waves’ appearing everywhere, sensible timespan was pushed to one side. even in Britain, it seemed even more obvious that film was the only art actually communicating with significant numbers of people, and provoking real debate. How did you convert your interest I never completed the philosophy doctorate because in film into a more formal role? 1968 intervened. I became very active in cultural politics and political activities. From Warwick I would get on Since my PhD grant had run out, I needed a job. The my motorbike and go to philosophy seminars in Oxford; first paid teaching I got was at Lanchester College but I also went to the Centre for Contemporary Cultural of Advanced Technology in Coventry, teaching Studies at Birmingham University, where I came to know communications studies. They needed somebody to Stuart Hall. My biggest inspiration at Warwick was the explain Marshall McLuhan, who had published the historian E.P. Thompson. Edward was an absolutely hugely influential book Understanding Media in 1964 charismatic figure, and he got me into politics through a and was the flavour of the decade. I had been excited

I feel a strong sense of continuity. What I was doing in the mid-1970s, then at the BFI in the 1980s, and what I do today are not that very different – although addressed to successive generations whose relationship to film and media continues to change.

16 British Academy Review Spring 2019

by his first highly original book, The Mechanical Bride films about the great philosophers – such as Socrates, (1951) – discovered by chance in the Queen’s library – Descartes, Blaise Pascal – creating a kind of audio-visual and was continuing to follow him. McLuhan’s paradoxes encyclopaedia. They were wonderful films, but they were were considered in those days to be really difficult to totally inaccessible and nobody knew anything about understand, and it was thought that somebody with a them. Remember, this was before video. So we made it background in philosophy would be the right person to our job to bring Rossellini’s films into distribution; and teach about him. His decoding of advertisements was to create awareness of them, the BFI published a parallel fascinating, so I homed in on that for a couple of terms. series of informal publications – here my magazine- Then in 1969 I got a job at Derby College of Art, editing background proved useful. I also brought teaching complementary studies. I think the assumption unknown Soviet films into distribution, to ‘refresh’ the was that I would mainly teach elementary philosophy old Film Society canon. to the students. But I started introducing film, which Later, when it became clear that the days of 16 seemed logical and appealing in an art school. We mm film were numbered, I launched the BFI’s video installed some projectors, turned a studio into a publishing activity. We became the most avant-garde kind of cinema, and taught film under the rubric of publishers of video in Britain, helped by an alliance complementary studies. There was no curriculum that with the great French producer Anatole Dauman, who forced you to go in one direction; it could be anything gave us access to his catalogue of modern classics such you wanted. And film seemed to work very well – for as Hiroshima mon amour, Last Year at Marienbad and fashion students, for future fine artists, and particularly Wings of Desire. We issued a box set of Hans-Jürgen for Derby’s very ambitious photography students. Syberberg’s monumental Hitler: A Film from Germany We invited a lot of part-timers to come and teach – eight hours long – and in the same month a box set of film – one of whom was Laura Mulvey, now also a Lanzmann’s Shoah, because nobody else wanted to take Fellow of the British Academy, and hugely influential a risk on these huge, seemingly uncommercial works. in launching film theory. Derby was one of the few places in the country in the mid-1970s that was teaching film in an organised way. This was still well before film What sort of audiences were going studies became something that you could actually get to see the films in the BFI’s programme? a qualification in, except at the Slade. The British Film Institute (BFI) was seed-funding fixed-term lectureships They included people who would later become film at Warwick, Keele and Essex as an experiment to see makers, film teachers, and workers in the evolving if film could be injected into universities. So there was structure of the regional arts associations – what it a sense in which film studies was bubbling up, just became fashionable to call ‘film culture’ was beginning becoming visible above the parapet. to emerge, and posts were starting to appear across the country. But many were the traditional audience of film In 1976, you went to work at the BFI. societies, dedicated to the art and history of cinema. How did that come about? I think film societies continue to be a major cultural resource in this country. I still enjoy going to film I was headhunted by somebody I knew who was working societies and introducing an evening of film, giving a at the BFI, at least partly because I was ‘not one of the talk, or even teaching a day school. Many of these are on London mafia’. My job was to organise the programming Russian cinema, because there is interest in both Soviet of the regional film theatres that the BFI was supporting and post-Soviet cinema that is not being catered for – it eventually had over 40 venues that it was involved anywhere else. I try to enlarge people’s understanding with. The battle cry of the period was: ‘Don’t show films that Soviet cinema was more than just Eisenstein, just because they’re new and highly praised by the although I continue to work on Eisenstein too, as he is London critics . Let’s have “structured programming”, revealed to be so different from the old stereotype of a with a cultural purpose.’ I have to admit this was calculating propagandist by the writings and especially sometimes interpreted as ‘showing people films that are drawings that are now available. good for them.’ I must say I feel a strong sense of continuity. What We were very interested in neglected, then I was doing in the mid-1970s, then at the BFI in the inaccessible areas in the history of cinema. For example, 1980s, and what I do today are not that very different many knew about the founding moment of Italian – although addressed to successive generations whose neorealism in the late 1940s, because of Rome, Open City relationship to film and media continues to change. and Bicycle Thieves. The key figure, Roberto Rossellini, was still alive, but he was now making dramatised

17 The interviews

You also had the opportunity to promote onto the agenda and taken more seriously – which is awareness of the British film makers really what I’ve spent most of my life doing. Powell and Pressburger at the BFI.

In 1978 I fought to put on a big retrospective at the You have indeed done a lot with the British National Film Theatre of Michael Powell and Emeric Academy. For example, there is an article Pressburger, our greatest, but then neglected film by you in the British Academy Review, makers. To accompany it, I produced a small book for arising from the conference you co organised the BFI in my own time. The retrospective was repeated in 2001 on ‘Lantern Projections’. all over the world, and the book circulated widely. Then in 1985, to mark Michael Powell’s 80th birthday, I wrote That conference had some excellent contributions on the another book about Powell and Pressburger, entitled history of the magic lantern, from art historians as well Arrows of Desire, an account of their partnership as The as lanternists. I still have copies of that issue, and refer Archers. I managed to persuade Martin Scorsese to write to it. Subjects such as this, outside of conventional film, a foreword for it – he was passionate about their work – are very important to me, as part of what I call the ‘long and that led to Powell suggesting I assemble interviews history’ of projected images – of which cinema is only with Scorsese into a book. one phase in the last 100 years. I talk to students at film schools and universities whenever I can about the meteoric rise of the At this point, you were clearly doing a lot stereoscope in the mid-19th century, still little of things of an academic nature, but you appreciated, and the magic lantern. They need to know were not actually in an academic post. about these, especially because it’s all coming full circle. Students today are really interested in virtual reality I had been teaching a London University extramural (VR) and augmented reality (AR), and this takes us right course, and was being asked to give visiting lectures; I back to the 1890s. That was the moment when ‘extended also had a year out at the Art Institute of Chicago, which reality’ first became a practical possibility through allowed me to teach Russian art history. And for the combinations of the magic lantern, the stereoscope and CNAA, the body that validated polytechnics’ degrees, moving pictures. Moving pictures were actually the I was on the Art History panel, with responsibility for disappointing part of it, because they were not in 3D. The film studies – as it was becoming an academic subject. cinema took off unexpectedly as a ‘flat’ spectacle, and Through that I got to know a lot of art historians and was of course vastly successful, but it temporarily killed people in media and communications studies. In a some of the other forms that had been current in optical sense, I had an advantage over them, in that I was in a media. position to make things happen. I could get films into Today, we are living in a new kind of digital multi- distribution, or into the London Film Festival; we could platform era, when all of these experiences are back publish things. on the agenda. When I show students a stereograph of So I was edging closer to academia, but still people looking into a stereoscope, they instantly say essentially working at the cultural end of the film that it looks like VR glasses. This was a hugely popular industry, as well as becoming involved with the EU’s parlour activity in Victorian times; Queen Victoria MEDIA programme. Then, when my great friend and herself was a stereo enthusiast. Now we can see how mentor at the BFI, Tony Smith, left to become President relevant it might be for the current debate about whether of Magdalen College, Oxford, through him I had the VR will ‘happen’. Naysayers claim that nobody wants opportunity to become Oxford University’s first lecturer to wear a headset. But in the Victorian era they had no in film, and a supernumerary fellow of Magdalen. The problem at all with using stereoscopes. So this is a very post was funded by John Paul Getty, who loved film and interesting area for speculation. was a wonderful benefactor for the BFI. More or less simultaneously, I got a letter in the post saying that I had been elected as a Fellow of the British Your own current focus of interest is Academy. I remember my first reaction was ‘What the early British film maker, Robert Paul. on earth is this? A scam?’ The relevant Section of the What do we need to know about him? Academy’s Fellowship had just changed its scope to cover ‘Modern Languages, Literatures and other media’ In the mid-1990s, for the ‘Centenary of Cinema’, I wrote in 1994, and so I think they needed some ‘other media’ and co-produced a television series for the BFI called people. It was quite strange and daunting, to put it The Last Machine, about ‘early cinema and the birth of mildly. But I saw it as a further opportunity to get film the modern world’. Terry Gilliam fronted it, so it got a

18 British Academy Review Spring 2019

Arrows of Desire took its title from the name of Powell and Pressburger’s production company, The Archers, intended to signal their determination to aim high and wide in their films – in James Agate’s verse, ‘It’s better to miss Naples than hit Margate.’

19 The interviews

remarkably good slot on BBC 2 – on Saturday evenings at 8 o’clock. I also wrote a book to accompany it. While making that series, I realised that we knew very little about the person who was obviously the key British pioneer, Robert Paul. We just had a few of his films. So I thought I should do some proper research on him. That is finally coming to fruition this year: 2019 is the 150th anniversary of his birth. It has been a difficult subject to research, because Robert Paul left no personal papers and there is no traceable family. Only recently did I discover that he actually had three children, who all died in early infancy. A Paul Mellon senior research fellowship gave me a year to do some archival research, which has also taken me to Australia and Canada, where his films were widely shown in the 1890s. But I had to accept that there were many things I was never going to know about him because they seem to be unrecorded, and then write the book anyway. Even so, it is going to be a very big book. Disappointingly, it was hard to find a publisher. Even though I had previously produced best-selling film books such as Scorsese on Scorsese, British publishers all said ‘Robert who?’, and declined to take a chance on it, which I think is a shame. However, the University of Chicago Press were happy to take the book, and even to wait nearly 20 years for delivery! My aim in 2019 is to show that cinema as we know it actually started in Britain – not in America or France, as we are accustomed to believe. The Lumière brothers invented a form of moving pictures with their Cinématographe that was influential and spread all over the world; but these were essentially ‘views’, and could hardly be considered cinema. Quite soon after he started in 1895, Robert Paul had a very clear vision. In 1898 he placed an advertisement saying that the public was weary of watching trains, trams and buses on screen. ‘The capacity of animated pictures for producing breathless sensation, laughter and tears has hardly been realised’, he declared. The advertisement went on to announce that ‘A staff of Artists and Photographers have been at work in North London, with the object of producing a series of animated Photographs (Eighty in Number), each of which tells a tale, whether Comic, Pathetic or Dramatic … with such clearness, brilliancy and telling effect that the attention of the beholders should be riveted.’ In February 2019, as a Visiting Professor at Gresham College, I gave a lecture on ‘Taking London to the World: Robert Paul Shows his Native City in Motion’, which can be seen on the Gresham College website. In it I talked about one of the humorous little films that Robert Paul released in autumn 1898: ‘Come Along, Do!’ This The first image, which shows a couple taking refreshment on is actually the world’s first two-shot film – an exterior a bench before making their way into an art gallery, comes scene followed by an interior – even if, unfortunately, the from the existing first shot of Robert Paul’s 1898 film ‘Come second shot is lost. But Paul also invented the illustrated Along, Do!’ The lower two images are taken from the film catalogue that Paul printed, and are all that exists for the lost second scene.

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film catalogue, and in one of these we have two images Looking to the future, in the discipline of film from that second shot, so we have an idea of what was in studies, what do you think are the potentially it. I have persuaded my son, who is an animator, to use new, exciting directions of travel? these images as the basis for a digital reconstruction and tinting – so that we can show what the world’s first two- Roughly speaking, I think there are three directions – shot film looked like. or corrections to where we are. From April to July 2019, there will be an exhibition First of all, we need to get audio-visual media more about Robert Paul at Bruce Castle in Tottenham: that’s firmly integrated into the traditional narrative of modern in the London Borough of Haringey, which also includes history. It is depressing that the average historical Muswell Hill, where he built his studio. monograph dealing with aspects of the 19th to the 21st And as well as the large academic book, I have centuries, is still quite primitive in its understanding of scripted a graphic novel on Robert Paul, covering the the role of cinema in society. The same few examples beginnings of his career, titled Time Traveller: Robert are trotted out, and they are usually wrongly described. Paul and the Invention of Cinema. It shows the story There seems to be a limited grasp by most historians of of how Paul made the first film in Britain, in Barnet the way that film has shaped people’s perceptions. in February 1895. For many years, people in Britain As an example, I have just written again about Powell believed that the true inventor of cinema was William and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes, after many previous Friese-Greene, who still has a tomb declaring this in commentaries and studies, arguing that the film is really Highgate Cemetery. The 1951 film The Magic Box showed valuable for understanding austerity Britain in 1948. Friese-Greene demonstrating his first success to a It offered audiences a vision of many things that they patrolling policeman, played by Laurence Olivier, who could aspire to: the luxury of colour and high fashion, enters the workshop and sees the first moving pictures travel to the south of France, and the cosmopolitan on the screen. Robert Donat plays Friese-Greene, and world of ballet. But it did so in a climate where the declares tearfully, ‘I’m not saying it’s perfect – far from heroine’s ultimate crime is that she goes out to work, it – but it works!’ The film was based on a popular because the taboo against women having a career in biography that was widely accepted up until 1960, 1948 was absolutely ferocious. when the photo-historian Brian Coe demonstrated that More generally, I believe the way we conceive of Friese-Greene had not done any of the things claimed lives today is very much influenced by film. For the on his behalf. However, the truth is that what we see in British Academy centenary volume Mapping Lives: this climactic scene of The Magic Box did happen – but The Uses of Biography, edited by Peter France FBA and to Robert Paul. When Friese-Greene died in miserable William St Clair FBA, I wrote a chapter called ‘A Life on circumstances in 1921, the story got transposed to his Film’, in which I give many examples of how film both memory. And in fact, new revisionist research on Friese- contributed to, and drew on, the revolution in biography Greene by Peter Domankiewicz demonstrates that he did in the early 20th century. successfully shoot a number of frames of film of Kings Road in London, even though he had little chance of showing them. What is your second ‘new direction’? I feel it’s really important to get this botched history straight, to put Robert Paul where he belongs, along We need to broaden the scope of film studies as an with his early collaborator Birt Acres – and indeed to academic subject to include both pre-cinema and post vindicate Friese-Greene. Paul was in many ways as cinema visual media. important as Edison. And his achievements up to 1900 I believe that we are living in a post-cinema age. certainly shaped the beginnings of our film industry. He Although of course there are still cinemas, seeing films was popularly known as ‘Daddy Paul’ by the pioneers of in this context is only a small part of the continuum of British cinema, because he was the man who led them everyday audiovisual experience. I took part in some up to 1908. But somehow, Britain forgot about him. Yet research on multi-platform viewing for the BFI back in people today need to know that the international cinema 2011, which showed that only 6 per cent of film viewings industry did start here, which conveys an important happened in a cinema. Clearly, if we are mainly watching message for a truer sense of British history. films on home screens, on mobiles or on iPads, we are living in a post-cinema era. It does not mean that such viewing is somehow inferior; it just means it’s different, and in significant ways. We need to have a much better understanding of the whole sweep of engagement in mediated worlds that goes from at least the 18th century, or even further back,

21 The interviews

Pages from the graphic novel by ILYA and Ian Christie, Time Traveller: Robert Paul and the Invention of Cinema, showing a key scene in the Robert Paul story that was later mis-attributed to William Friese-Greene in the film The Magic Box.

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23 The interviews

through the magic lantern and all the optical excitement lot to learn about the perceptual structures that enable of the 19th century, into cinema in the 20th century, and us to assimilate ever more complex representations , then into post-cinema and the on-line world of the 21st especially in new media. If film studies as a subject fails century. to get involved in experimentation in vision science, And it’s not just about films. It’s can be about it is missing an important source of insights. There intergenerational exchanging of video messages. If I needs to be much more interchange across disciplinary am watching messages from my daughter in Edinburgh boundaries. about my grandchildren, that is audio-visual mediation If I could free up enough time and space, I would in a new register. You can relate it to the history of definitely get involved in a research project into what amateur film, but it doesn’t really belong there. It is a MRI scanning, eye-tracking and techniques like that can new ‘communication space’ that we are living in, as the tell us about the way we consume images and how we distinguished French scholar Roger Odin terms it. In a multi-task with images. Indeed, I’m hoping my current recent book that I co-edited, Stories: Screen narrative work on screen ‘space and place’ will benefit from in the digital era, Odin asks what language can be cognitive science data. used to analyse the semiotics of live video messaging through Skype. He believes we cannot just use the old terminology of film – shot, reverse shot, tracking shot Understanding how we consume images – we need a new one. We are living in an exciting world presumably helps our understanding of that offers us lots of opportunities and challenges, yet their impact on us? film studies as a discipline seems too often to be carrying on as it did last century. Yes, and it connects with my first point. If historians looked more deeply at the impact of visual and audio- visual media, we would understand more about how so And your third? much of the 20th century – and indeed the 19th century too – was shaped by it. We need to have much more interplay between film We have had the recent example of ‘£350 million’ on academics like me and people working in neuroscience the side of a bus. It is not just painting that on the bus; and cognitive psychology. it is reduplicating that image, amplifying it, recycling it One of my colleagues at Birkbeck, University of and returning to it. It is the quotation, re-quotation and London, Tim Smith, is an experimental psychologist multiplication of images that is hugely influential. who does a lot of work using eye-tracking and other And it has been thus for a long time. Winston physiological measurement techniques. We have done Churchill’s favourite film was Lady Hamilton, almost some presentations together, and I do think there is a certainly the one he watched more than any other, and made in Hollywood by Alexander Korda to try to bring America into the war in 1940. Churchill absolutely loved it, and probably had a hand in scripting it. There is a wonderful account by the travel writer H.V. Morton, part I am promoting Robert of his staff during the war, about Churchill watching it for the umpteenth time on a battleship while crossing the Atlantic. For me, this story connects the world of Paul’s 150th anniversary propaganda, the use of romanticised history in real political situations, and the way that films work on the in order to say, ‘Don’t individual and collective psyche, embedding images you realise that Britain that remain important to people. You have talked a lot about the need to raise was actually in at the awareness of film. Do we in this country have beginning, before there a particular problem with taking it seriously? In 1996, I participated in a British Academy discussion was any American film about ‘The English Suspicion of Cinema’. My fellow speaker, Professor John Carey FBA, pointed me towards industry at all?’ The Lost Girl, one of D.H. Lawrence’s great diatribes

24 British Academy Review Spring 2019

against cinema, which Lawrence absolutely hated. A year earlier, I had written quite a big piece for the Times Literary Supplement on British prejudice against – and resistance to – film. The gist was that we mistrust it, feel it is always lying or misrepresenting, in ways that are more coercive than the routine misrepresentation of literary historical fiction. And, perhaps as a result, we doubt that it deserves any serious state support. Of course, in France cinema is famously taken very seriously. As it is in America too: the year I spent in Further reading and viewing Chicago, where you could have real discussions about movies with academic heavyweights, was an eye-opener. Some of Ian Christie’s books etc. And within academic film studies, there can mentioned in the interview. also be an elitist a view of cinema, which limits the potential impact of our discipline. In November 2018 1985 book: Arrows of Desire: The films of I wrote a piece for Sight & Sound about Peter Jackson’s Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. colourisation of the First World War footage, They Shall Second edition 1994. Not Grow Old, because I was irritated by silent film aficionados saying that he shouldn’t have tampered with 1989 book, co-edited with David Thompson: archive film. Of course he wasn’t tampering with it: he Scorsese on Scorsese. Third edition 2003. was enhancing it in a novel and effective way. I watched it in a cinema, surrounded by an audience that was 1994 book: The Last Machine: Early Cinema riveted and moved. Perhaps Jackson was too bombastic and the Birth of the Modern World. in his claims, but I think this was an example of experts disliking the fact that their niche subject had been made 1995 television series, written and too mainstream. co-produced: The Last Machine I continue to be fascinated by Edwardian figures such as Rudyard Kipling, and H.G. Wells, who both 1995 article: ‘“Has the Cinema a Career?” understood the importance of film very early. Wells Pictures and prejudice: the origins of never forgot an early meeting he had with Robert Paul, British resistance to film’, Times Literary to discuss creating a ‘time machine’ experience. J.M. Supplement (17 November 1995). Barrie also wanted to get involved in film much more than he was able to. He made lots of amateur films, and 2001 article: ‘Through a Glass Brightly: even wrote a script for Peter Pan – which was rejected by The Magic Lantern in History’, Hollywood. The more you know about Barrie, you realise British Academy Review, [5] that film really was the guiding dream that he wanted (January–July 2001), 21–3. to follow, if only he could have found a way into it professionally. And indeed Hitchcock, who had to leave 2002 book chapter: ‘A Life on Film’, in Britain to realise his full potential, had a lifelong desire Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography, to film Barrie’s Mary Rose. edited by Peter France and William St Clair One of the reasons why I have been promoting (British Academy Centenary Monograph). Robert Paul’s 150th anniversary is that I want to say to Paperback edition 2004. the British, and especially young people, ‘Don’t you realise that Britain was actually in at the beginning, 2018 book, co-edited with Annie van den before there was any American film industry at all? We Oever: Stories: Screen narrative in the had a film industry, but we let it all slip through our digital era (The Key Debates: Mutations and fingers. And we have continued to dissipate our talent, Appropriations in European Film Studies). through dereliction and, at certain levels, due to a kind of distaste.’ November 2018, article: ‘They Shall Not Grow Old review: Peter Jackson brings controversial colour to WWI footage’, Sight & Sound.

February 2019 lecture: ‘Taking London to the World: Robert Paul Shows his Native City in Motion’, Gresham College Lecture.

2019 (forthcoming) book: Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema.

25 © The British Academy So we dispensed with the rector, and the site lay lay and the site So dispensed we with the rector, the a note from When I got Oxford, I received to The only archaeologist I had ever heard of was Kathleen of was heard archaeologistThe only I had ever who had been She sent digging in Leicester. Kenyon, received, me back the first typewritten I had ever letter saying, ‘This must not destroy it. and you is evidence, doing, report a museum it to must stop what you’re You it for the moment.’ and leave Then about go Oxford University. to to until I was fallow a real archaeologist he was saying an aged man came, dug another We – he had dug with Mortimer Wheeler. And wall. and found more the site, into trench wavering reported Advertiser. Harborough this was in the Market Ashmolean Museum Will you saying, ‘Dear Miss Cramp, I am I thought, ‘Now, Taylor.’ come and visit me? M.V. had been assistant F.J. to Miss Taylor an archaeologist.’ went woman. When I an elderly was now and Haverfield, slight embarrassment the Market my to I saw seeto her, with this of her, in front spread Advertiser Harborough picture of me leaning and the caption: on a spade ‘She think you said, ‘You Miss Taylor is going Oxford.’ to On celebrating the stone the stone On celebrating sculpture of the Anglo-Saxons Rosemary Cramp is Professor of is Professor Cramp Rosemary Emeritus at Durham Archaeology of a Fellow elected She was University. in 2006. the British Academy Rosemary Rosemary Cramp When I was aboutWhen I was 12, I became an archaeologist – or reportI thought I ought to to find this somebody else. Is there anything in your background background in your anything Is there would suggested you have would that in archaeology? a career pursue a very deeply rootedI come from farming background. a farmer, grandfather was my a farmer, father was My and so on. I lived a farmer, was great-grandfather my in the country at a place called Glooston, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire. I thought I did – because villa on our found a Roman we be sister said she had found strictly truthful, my land. To some nice things for the floor of the little house which She building, were do in the country. we as children least tiles building. At had found the pilae of a Roman had a children’s be I only I thought it ought to Roman. to Then I went and I lookedencyclopaedia, it up there. as the most learnedsee person the rector, in the village. part things of the Roman Like most rectors, he took away and put them in his garden. 26 The interviewsThe 27 British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British Part of an early 8th-century Part a plant-scroll showing frieze men and a beast, by inhabited of in the church a wall built into is A male figure Jarrow. St Paul, naturalistically in profile, shown and the branches, striding over His be bare-footed. appears to in a lock behind his hair falls conveyed are His features ear. a single by his eye lightly, in punch mark. He is dressed a short kirtle with what seems the waist around be a fold to his shoulder which passes over and flies behind him. out Middlemass, T. Photo: © Corpus Anglo-Saxon of Sculpture. Stone After a few years, we started we an Archaeologya few years, courseAfter I was extremely lucky to have fall into my lap the my fall into have lucky to extremely I was How did you come to move come move to did you How Durham University?to A rather strange job up in Durham. came It required English and a fledgling be teach History, to to able you I advice, Hawkes’s On Christopher Archaeology group. gotreluctantly it, and a bit applied rather half-heartedly, came north. what became, that into on its and then broadened own, think, like to a great Archaeology department. I’d since. And it been Durham ever at have You possibilities. rich with Anglo-Saxon is an area It was certainly a great thrill living so certainly a great thrill living near where to It was Bede and Durham itself was, that is steeped is a town in and been very happy stayed I have Anglo-Saxon history. here. at both sites monastery of the double excavations both Although at of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow. still are the churches there Monkwearmouth and Jarrow there the 7th century, – from – in part,that date anyway thesis which had the catchy title ‘Somethesis aspects catchy which had the Old of English vocabulary recent archaeological in the light of on ‘Beowulf Archaeology’, and first paper, My evidence’. came out of that. I realised that my interest in archaeology and my I realised interest in archaeology and my that my So on a training course Corbridge, I went and to But your degree wasn’t in archaeology, was it? was in archaeology, wasn’t degree But your read History whether to known or English at I hadn’t Oxford – I liked both – and in the end had plumped was taught I year, first the end of my for English. At Whitelock. Dorothy by me I should specialise She told Germanic ranged which primitive from II’, in ‘Course 21, I turned being And when I was from a Spenser. to disorganised being to undergraduate a disorganised College, don, teaching Anglo-Saxonyoung at St Anne’s Oxford. I taught interest in Anglo-Saxon together. coming were students a lot aboutmy and the historical background weren’t there In thosethe archaeological evidence. days, And then, people bringing thosemany together. two I started Christopher Hawkes, a B.Litt. with working have found a Roman villa. What makes you think it is a think villa. What makes you a Roman found have except Roman anything was there know villa?’ I didn’t villas, sothat thought. She asked if I had she destroyed sections? No. Could I draw been survey? taught to No. everything an archaeologist through ought to She went had better be and then said, ‘I think you be do, able to trained.’ time with the Oxford University leisure spentmy all had a brilliant Society that at We Archaeological Society. be in it going on to people with many involved time, professional archaeologists.

© The British Academy The interviews

28 British Academy Review Spring 2019

is nothing left of the monastic buildings on either site. At Jarrow, the Ministry of Works had restored the Indeed, no one knew where they were. We know a certain existing buildings and made them safe, and then wanted amount from Bede about the Monkwearmouth-Jarrow to date them. That was all I was asked to do. I started monastic community, and people used to say to me, ‘It with a couple of trial trenches. And then the next year – must be nice for you digging a site that Bede has talked in 1965 – I dug inside a building and found, underneath about’; but he tells you nothing about how it was laid the walls, another stone structure and one with an opus out. signinum floor, which I knew would be Anglo-Saxon. At Monkwearmouth, they were doing a development Nothing stopped me after that. I dropped the idea of just and were going to pull down houses near to the church. dating the standing buildings, and went for trying to find Somebody said that perhaps we ought to see if there was the plan of the monastery. anything left of the monastery of the Venerable Bede. Over the years, we dug a huge building there – it was When I worked on the south side of the church, the 90 feet long. The last dig we did at Jarrow being in 1984: houses were still occupied, and I was digging in people’s it was a large part of my life, and hundreds of students backyards; it was sometimes difficult to get access to went through this experience. them, but eventually you were nobody unless you had a trench in your yard. We recruited small children to look after the trenches at night. As a reward they were That same year, 1984, saw the first fruit allowed to trowel through the barrows of excavated soil of the major endeavour that you have been to see if any bit of pot had been missed and tipped in working on ever since, the Corpus of Anglo- with it; sometimes they found them. And when they Saxon Stone Sculpture, which is a British had done three years of that, I had a special trench in Academy Research Project. which they could learn how to trowel properly. I have always involved the local communities in my digs. The idea of recording the pre-Conquest stone sculpture You can show them the past and make them enthused of England came up when I was still teaching in Oxford. about it, part of it and willing to protect it, all of which is V.E. Nash-Williams had just published his book on The important. Early Christian Monuments of Wales, and he came to I did find buildings that were the heartland of the lecture in Oxford. He said, ‘Something like that needs to monastery. However, I had not finished Wearmouth be done for England. You should try it.’ As soon as I got when I started Jarrow and, for two or three years, I dug to Durham, I looked around for a research project that both at the same time in the summer, which probably would be suitable. We do have in this region an extensive was not a sensible thing to do. collection of carved Anglo-Saxon stones, and I decided that – with the help of my first two research students, Richard Bailey and Jim Lang – we would try to record these. In my hubris, I thought that I should do the whole of England, so I went to the British Academy and asked for money. We got some starter funding, and from that period onwards the British Academy has supported us. I am desperately grateful because, without the Academy’s support, the project would never have lifted off. The three of us made a start – myself on the counties Left of Durham and Northumberland, Richard Bailey on A stone grave-marker, dating from Cumbria, and Jim Lang on the East Riding of Yorkshire. the early to mid 11th century, from South-East England, including Professor Martin the Old Minster, Winchester. It was Biddle’s excavations at Winchester, was completed. We discovered in the archaeological recruited other authors from both the Royal Commission excavation north of Winchester on Historical Monuments and English Heritage. But Cathedral, in 1965. The arcade may everything was controlled from Durham, with myself as be a representation of the building General Editor, and with first Eric Cambridge and then around the Tomb of Christ in the Derek Craig as the publication editors. church of the Holy Sepulchre in In 2018 we published Volume XIII, on the Anglo- Jerusalem. The lamp hanging in Saxon stone sculpture of Derbyshire and Staffordshire. the central arch between curtains, At the moment I am working to finish Volume XIV, which and with rays shining from it, may will include Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. We symbolize the resurrection and will then have completed Northumbria, Wessex and eternal life.

Photo: © P.M.J. Crook.

29 The interviews

Mercia. For the final two volumes in the series, we move into East Anglia, where there isn’t a lot of sculpture, I’m afraid. But the series wasn’t meant just to publish the grand pieces which everybody knew about. It publishes the small pieces which contribute to building up the overall picture.

Has the Corpus project identified a lot of previously unknown sculpture?

In the late 19th century, they were aware of about 167 sites containing Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture. Sir Thomas Kendrick FBA found some more, working for the Britain Museum. But to date we have recorded 3,528 stones from 1,101 sites – an extraordinary wealth of material. We first look at written records, to see if we can find things that have been written up long ago and forgotten. Then there is fieldwork, which usually takes many years for each volume. In some areas, every medieval church has been looked at, to make absolutely certain nothing has been missed. It has been a remarkable effort by my colleagues, because they are only paid their travel expenses, and they normally give up their holidays. Once the project is known, people do ring you up and ask, ‘Do you know about this?’ And this can be very helpful. We also answer a lot of queries from the curators of sculpture sites. The sad thing is that a lot of this sculpture is in a secondary context. After the Norman Conquest, because the Normans – so miserably, I think – despised Anglo- Saxon architecture, pieces were built into walls and they have emerged later. At the Reformation, a lot were destroyed, as Popish monuments. So, many sculptures are shattered fragments. This contrasts with Ireland, where so many crosses are still standing in their place.

Is the stone cross a special British and Irish phenomenon?

It is. Where it began in stone is a moot point. I still think it probably is Northumbria. I put this forward as a theory and I still believe it: when people like Benedict Biscop at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, or Wilfrid at Hexham, imported stonemasons from France to build their churches, these trained English masons. The native masons were then capable of replicating the idea of wooden crosses in stone, and that is how you get some of the really grand, early 8th-century crosses that everybody knows about, like Ruthwell and Bewcastle. The grandest crosses tend to be put up on the borders of the Anglo Saxon kingdom – the early ones are meant to impress. Some of them are meant to educate as well, via

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the scenes that are on them. They are the source not Can you detect different schools just of sermons but of inspiration, I suppose, and or even hands? meditation. By the Viking Age, you get many more crosses I wish one could. Sometimes you can detect particular merely put up in memory of individual people, and here hands. Only the other day I was thinking that two pieces you get pictures of secular figures, sometimes armed, which are located very near to each other must be by the not only Christ or the Apostles. same person. But we are still not absolutely certain where the carvers were. There is no doubt that, to begin with, What is particularly striking about the they were in monasteries. Whether the kings later had sculpture of Anglo-Saxon England? their own carvers is something that I think still has to be thought about, and probably will never be proved. It is a sign of achievement if you look at Europe as a Certainly by the 10th or 11th centuries, you seem to whole. My Italian friends are absolutely amazed by have carvers who were itinerant and were doing lesser Anglo-Saxon sculpture. In Italy and in parts of France, work, turning out monuments for parvenu Vikings who professional carvers carried on working after the wanted new memorials. Roman period, and they kept on turning out the same stuff. But in England there is a real break, and a true vernacular in stone carving develops, producing a To what extent is the Corpus producing a much greater variety. permanent record of sculpture that is at risk? We can also see influences from one English kingdom to another, depending on which was in the It is an unfortunate fact today that items in churches ascendant. In its heyday, Northumbria influenced seem to be much more at risk than they were. And there areas right down into northern Mercia. When Wessex have been cases – just a few – where things have gone. became the dominant kingdom at the end of the period, When I first began the work with sculpture, I started in the Midlands you can see something changing and looking down in the South West and worked my way becoming more Wessex-like or using Wessex imagery. northwards. When I came back to writing my Corpus So you can see it as an influential art. volume on South-West England, I was looking at places There are also interesting links between the that I had visited many years before and, in several iconography in the sculpture and that used in places, pieces had gone and my photograph of what had manuscripts and metalwork. been there before was the only thing I could include. You can also have the situation where a church has a leaking roof, a diminished congregation and a huge debt, and it is tempting to sell the sculpture. This is rare, but I have had to try to stop it in a couple of places. There are at least two pieces of sculpture which are still at risk in England now. At least the Corpus is making a record of it all. Of course, that does draw attention to things, but I think that is a lesser evil. We do get a lot of enquiries from the general public. And we help churches to produce displays that show their stones off well. That makes them value them more.

The Corpus is heading for completion, with just three volumes left to be published. But a lot of the content is also available online.

The printed books remain important, quite apart from the fact that I think they are rather beautiful objects Left in themselves. There is still a convenience in flicking A stone cross, dating from the first through a book to find a comparable image. half of the 9th-century, in St Paul’s But the catalogue photographs and descriptions of churchyard, Irton, Cumbria. the first nine volumes are all now available online. This

Photo: T. Middlemass, © Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture.

31 The interviews

32 British Academy Review Spring 2019

is particularly useful for students abroad, who use the material extensively. I am glad that Anglo- At the end of the project, we will deposit the Corpus records with the Archaeology Data Service. But we will Saxon England is seen keep copies in Durham University Library, so that they will remain accessible for people to do further work on as what it is: the them in the future. And we will conclude with a programme of workshops, organised by the Co-Director of the project, beginning of everything Professor Sarah Semple, which will show the world what we have done, and sum up the achievement. that was English.

Have you enjoyed your life in archaeology?

Yes, I have – and I still am enjoying it. My life wasn’t anything planned. It emerged in the shape that it did. When I first went to Oxford, I would not have thought I would finish up as a professor in Durham. But here I have been able to have an input into all sorts of things in the region, and that is one of the nice things about a university like Durham. Perhaps because I was the first female professor of archaeology – happily there are now plenty of them – I was asked to serve on lots of committees, and I did get an enormous education out of that. For over 25 years I was on the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, which was very enjoyable. I was a Trustee of the British Museum for 20 years, and that was fascinating too. I was also one of the first Commissioners for English Heritage. And I served as President of both the Council for British Archaeology, and later the Society of Antiquaries. Finally, I am glad that Anglo-Saxon England is seen as what it is: the beginning of everything that was English. So much of our laws and our statutes started there. Our parishes and our settlement patterns were laid down Further reading then. And in spite of the Norman Conquest, vigorously and rigorously people continued to speak and write in Information about the Corpus of English, and maintained what had been some of the Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture can earliest vernacular literature in Europe. be found via ascorpus.ac.uk

Left The so-called Hedda stone, in Peterborough Cathedral, is from the late eighth or early ninth century, probably from the earlier Anglo- Saxon monastery. On this face are Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone represented Christ, the Virgin and Sculpture, Volume XIII, Derbyshire four other figures. and Staffordshire, by Jane Hawkes and Philip Sidebottom, was published Photo: © Joanna Story. by the British Academy in 2018.

33 © The British Academy I cast for a set around could which of source materials For my doctorate, I decided that I wanted to do to doctorate, I decided that I wanted my For something historical geography. on computing and being being was a lot done on of work In the 1970s, applications in humanitiescomputer and social sciences huge mainframes that occupiedresearch. This involved a whole building, less had far yet processing than power of cardboard used trays a modern smartphone. You punch-cards, and the programs ran overnight. questionsanswer impossible using manual methods. I century – a turned the tithe surveys to of the mid-19th series of maps produced on a parish basis for about three-quarters the Tithes were of England and Wales. A major focus of your research was on tithe was research A major focus of your is about? that what explain Can you surveys. being an ardent science geographer, I switched almostbeing science an ardent geographer, become to a human and especiallyovernight historical geographer. On the history of maps, On the history of maps, the future and mapping Academy of the British Roger Kain is Professor of Humanities of at the is Professor Kain Roger of University Study, School of Advanced of the British a Fellow elected He was London. and has been the Academy’s in 1990, Academy and Higher Education (Research Vice-President since 2014. Policy) Roger Kain Roger When I read geography at University College London, at University When I read geography Was there anything in your background which background in your anything there Was in geography, an interest indicated have would and specifically maps? in in north-west London, in Harrow, up brought I was just on the edgegreenbelt, of the and so not far from open house woods were and fields. One big passionmy coarsewas fishing,my mates and I used and to go off on our bikes the south-west to canals, Hertfordshire lakes Chiltern coming off the and especially the rivers to in Hills. So I became subliminally, interested, probably I grammar school Weald, my landscape. in Harrow At and what really had an inspirational geography teacher, geography seemed how interested me was explain the to spend and hills that I liked to valleys form of the rivers, a lot of time in. who Hugh Prince, I had another inspirational teacher, taught a course – all on English historical geography That the human landscape had evolved. about the way a whole new dimension, and from to eyes opened my 34 The interviewsThe 35

1 British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British The great tithe barn at The great dates Abbotsbury in Dorset such as Barns 1400. c. from the symbolise this came to that developed antipathy who paid farmers between tithes and the established and which Church, riots rural into exploded before in the early 1830s the Tithe enacted Parliament in 1836. Commutation Act Kain. Roger Photo: The town maps work was finished in 2015. We finished 2015. in was mapsThe town work , we generated , we England and Wales of Maps In The Tithe turned the enclosure to mapsThen we of England The final part mapping of was the of this trilogy published a popular, highly illustrated narrative illustrated narrative highly published a popular, from history of towns, of the mapping of the evolution period the end of the 19th to the medieval through But the serious research the British output from century. By this time you had moved to the to moved had time you this By did you How of Exeter. University in maps there? interest continue your I embarked a 20-year on undertaking produce to studies of all the types manuscript of large-scale maps that pre-dated large-scale the printed maps of the Ordnance And century. Survey the 19th which came in at the end of very good was of Exeter in supportingthe University me project.such a long-term do to a catalogue maps of all the details of the as a tool for about researchers,future the it a narrative and added to cartographic material. that quarter of approximately which cover and Wales, the tithe by not surveyed that was England and Wales commissioners a lot in the 1840s – including quite of those produced midland England. For we an abbreviated catalogue in book main catalogue form, with the held in of at the University digital format at the UK Data Archive Essex. Maps, 1470–1895’ project My on ‘British Town towns. Research Project adopted as a British Academy was in and that helped secure me to 1998, large the grants from Arts and Humanities Research Council the and from Leverhulme an article do the work. Trust And I wrote to about the project for the very first issue of the British in 1999. Review Academy I then thought that it would be goodI then thought that it would take the to So interest began my with maps as a source of notional tenth of a farmer’s produce that went to of a farmer’snotional to tenth produce that went support the established of England. In 1836 Church an Act these of Parliament commuted tithes a money for sent the was out into of surveyors An army payment. was out what tithe find to parishes of England and Wales a fair produce what was and due, it was where payable, done between 1836 surveyof the land. The whole was It producedand about detailed maps, highly 1855. every – a fabulous showing field me as set of data for who geographera historical you use. It could tell to farmedowned the land, who whether it was the land, or woodland, pasture by field. I chose field arable, the becausecounty of Kent, virtually all surveyed, it was and I transcribed these data from maps the written and along with them, on punch-cards that went records for processing.computer methodology that I had used for one county and extend With a Small Research Grant the whole country. it to – I remember it of £653 the British Academy from exactly – I did some test to to preliminary how work that I picked up an From the methodology. extend Economic Social and Research Council which grant, and with improved assistance, employ enabled me to produce processing on to a national computer went we Files of Mid- Tithe and Index of the Atlas study – An Nineteenth-Century England and Wales. that I becamedata, and from interestedthe maps in themselves, their construction and use. R

1 25–28. 1999), [1] (July 1998-July Review, British Academy Maps,1470–1895’, oger Kain,‘BritishTown

© The British Academy The interviews

36 British Academy Review Spring 2019

Academy Research Project is a digital catalogue, contemporary societies, and how did they affect change? curated by the Institute of Historical Research, Napoleon I, for example, used maps to eradicate University of London, which enables researchers to the pre-revolutionary geography of France. The ancien find out what maps there are for a particular town and régime and all its regions and provinces were swept what they contain. That also serves a conservation away and you had the départements and the communes, function, in that it helps prevent unnecessary and those were mapped. The map then becomes an consultations of fragile originals in archives. instrument for erasing the past. So that brought to an end a trilogy of studies of large-scale maps – which the British Academy helped make possible. And you now are involved in an even bigger project on the history of maps.

You have written about the different The History of Cartography is an even longer-term ways that maps have been used in the past, project than anything else that I’ve been involved in. including in an acclaimed book about the This project, based at the University of Wisconsin at use of the map in the service of the state. Madison, was established by Brian Harley and David Woodward. They both died tragically young, but one Maps are a valuable resource for modern historians. of David Woodward’s PhD students took on the overall But in our book, The Cadastral Map in the Service of directorship of the project. the State: A History of Property Mapping, Elizabeth I came on board to help them complete it, Baigent and I turned the lens around to look at the role and specifically to direct and edit the volume on that maps played in the past. How were they used in the 19th century, a period characterised by the internationalisation of maps and mapping. I go out to Madison several times a year, working with the staff employed there to co-ordinate an army of some 200 contributors from across the world who are writing sections for us. It’s going to be about a million words, Left Below a thousand images and two big, fat books, and should An extract of the tithe map Surveyors in the field appear in 2024. of Gittisham, Devon, 1838. working on the enclosure The History of Cartography project has developed Numbers in the fields relate map of Henlow, an interesting publishing model, which is quite topical to information about their Bedfordshire, c. 1795. in the light of current debates about open access. The ownership, occupation latest volume of the project, Cartography in the 20th and use which is recorded Image: derived from the Century, was published for sale as a printed book and a in accompanying written cartouche on the map for-purchase e-book by the University of Chicago Press documents known as tithe held by Bedfordshire in 2015; but after two years, PDF files of the volume apportionments. and Luton Archives and have been made freely available. Without being too Record Service. presumptuous, we think these big reference books are Photo: Devon Record Office. going to remain relevant for 50 years or more. So, the

37 The interviews

fact that people have had to wait two years before they can get free access to them is not a big deal in the long perspective of the project. But it has been important for meeting the understandable desire of the project’s federal funders that the outputs produced from public funding should be made freely available.

Does The History of Cartography serve a missionary function in helping to explain to historians how to use maps – how to understand the context and reasons behind their production?

The historian J.H. Parry said, ‘Old maps are slippery witnesses. But where would we be without them?’ Traditionally historians have held the written word as prime, with maps simply illustrative. But conceptual developments in the history of maps and mapping have shown how maps can be read as text in the same way that you can read, for example, a painting as a text – and so can decode its meanings. So yes, there is a proselytising role for The History of Cartography. It inspires a humanistic and interdisciplinary approach to map studies. It is making a statement that the history of maps and mapping is a legitimate sub-discipline of history, with its own set of methods and techniques. It’s a history of an artefact – a map. But it’s much more than just a history of the artefact. It’s the artefact in its society, why it was done, how it was produced, how it was used. I think the project is already having an effect. Historians who have nothing to do with maps are recognising The History of Cartography volumes published to date as making substantial contribution to historical understanding.

In that context, how important is it to judge maps in the past by modern standards of technical accuracy?

Accuracy and the quest for accuracy, a progressivist notion of the history of maps and mapping, has now been debunked. The history of maps is not how maps got more and more accurate until you get to the point now where you can place the table in front of us this afternoon in its exact location on a map of London. The accuracy of a map has to be related to the question: what is its purpose? I could draw a sketch map of how to get from here in the British Academy to my flat in Bloomsbury, and you’d be able to follow it and get there. It would look totally hopeless as a piece of accurate cartography, but it would have on it all the information that you need.

38 British Academy Review Spring 2019

John Hooker’s celebrated map of the city of Exeter, 1587. Photo: The British Library.

39 The interviews

And we all get around the London Underground Academy some measure of financial independence. But using Harry Beck’s wonderful ‘Tube map’. It bears that was a gradual process. no relation at all to topographic accuracy, but it is As one of the Academy’s Officers, what I was aware of topologically accurate. It shows how all the lines link to at that time was a view from outside that the voice of the each other, British Academy was not as strong as it should have been so that you can travel unerringly through the network. in championing the humanities and social sciences, and Historians of cartography in the days before the that we needed to ‘get our act together’. When Onora 1980s got obsessed by accuracy, but it was a cul-de-sac. O’Neill became President in 2005, she acknowledged and The History of Cartography project was conceived as a took on that challenge. way out of that cul-de-sac, to show instead that maps In this, Onora worked very well with Sir Martin are social constructs, not just technical artefacts. Rees, the President of the Royal Society, who was a huge supporter of the humanities and social sciences, in explaining the indivisibility of knowledge – at a In 1990 you were elected a Fellow time when government was taking a much narrower of the British Academy. view of what ‘science’ meant. That unified approach, undertaken in collaboration with the other national I can still remember the frisson with which I opened academies – the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of a very small manila envelope, which looked very Engineering, and the Academy of Medical Sciences unprepossessing on the outside, but which contained – has been pursued vigorously by all the succeeding a letter from the Secretary of the British Academy Presidents of the British Academy, to the great benefit telling me that I had been elected a Fellow. This of the humanities and social sciences and the whole UK was most amazing, and a huge honour. I still don’t research base. understand why I was honoured in that way, but it was humbling to think that my peers at that time felt that I was worthy of it. Since 2014, you’ve been Vice-President for When I look back now, I’d probably describe myself Research & Higher Education Policy, so you up to that point as a somewhat selfish academic, one have become the person responsible for the who had been generously treated by my university Academy’s voice in higher education policy at Exeter and given time to pursue personal and matters. Does the British Academy have a collaborative research, and I hadn’t involved myself in louder voice now? academic administration or management. Attending British Academy meetings in London provided a Yes, I think we now do speak with more authority and fantastic opportunity to network with colleagues – purpose. which increasingly I did as I became more familiar with The higher education policy aspect of the Academy’s the ways of the Academy. And then in 1997, I received a activities has become much more significant. We have letter from the President, Sir Tony Wrigley, asking me to been developing a strategy that identifies those non- serve for two years as a Vice-President. And that’s how discretionary activities that we absolutely have to my involvement in the work of the British Academy address – the things that our community really expects began to develop. the British Academy to say something about – and then some other discretionary activities that we think are important. In 2002, the British Academy’s The first category of higher education policy Centenary year, you became issues on which the Academy has spoken have Treasurer of the British Academy. included the like of the Research Excellence Framework, the Teaching Excellence Framework, I might mention, in connection with the Centenary, that and now the Knowledge Exchange Framework. We the Geography Section published a British Academy have put in a submission to the Augar review of centenary monograph which looked back on A Century university fees, as our community would expect us of British Geography, and Catherine Delano-Smith and to. And we have contributed to the current debates I contributed a chapter on ‘Geography displayed: maps about open access – which I made reference to earlier – and mapping’. and here we have also been developing our position as In terms of my role as Treasurer, a particular concern both a research funder and an academic publisher. was the need, following the British Academy’s move to 10–11 Carlton House Terrace in 1998, to rebuild the Academy’s Development Fund, the fund that gives the

40 British Academy Review Spring 2019

Roger Kain is editing the volume on Cartography in the Nineteenth Century, in The History of Cartography series. Illustrated here is Pedro García Conde, Carta Geografica General de la Republica Mexicana (London: James Wyld, 1845). Image: courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/Rare Books.

41 The interviews

work of the British Academy, a major concern has been ensuring that excellent people from each generation can enter academia to sustain our subjects. There have been times – as is the case now – when permanent posts are few and far between, and it’s difficult for people to get a step on the ladder. Our flagship British Academy British Academy Small Postdoctoral Fellowships scheme provides a mechanism to help people get from being a PhD student to becoming Research Grants are an academic. It offers three years of funding to enable early career researchers to translate their PhD work hugely valued by into a significant publication, and equally importantly to embark on their next piece of research. There is strong competition for these Postdoctoral Fellowships, humanities and social and those who get them go on to be very successful in securing posts in the research world. So, we know science academics that the scheme helps sustain the flow of excellent people into the future humanities and social sciences workforce.

What can you say about the new scheme of What are the other higher education British Academy / Wolfson Fellowships? policy issues that the British Academy has chosen to engage with? The Wolfson Foundation has generously awarded the British Academy £10 million to support the humanities Given the amount of resource that we’ve got, we and social sciences. Part of the money is to enable us to have had to choose those very carefully, and we construct a new lecture theatre and other public spaces have had some very grown-up discussions with the in the basement of 10–11 Carlton House Terrace. community and with the other academies about Another part of their gift is for a new scheme of what these should be. British Academy / Wolfson Fellowships. These seek to On the issue of language learning, the British provide support between our Postdoctoral Fellowships Academy has really made a difference in recent years for those at the outset of their careers, and our Mid- in drawing attention to the problem. Most recently, we Career Fellowships for those with a more established have issued a statement entitled Languages in the UK: career. The Wolfson scheme will enable those who’ve A call for action, about which there is an article got a permanent post, but are still early in their careers, elsewhere in this issue (pp. 12–13). to have some time to do a piece of work that will help We have also highlighted the importance of get them to the next stage in their university or quantitative numeracy skills in the social sciences – equivalent research institution. working in collaboration with the Nuffield Foundation. At the time of speaking, the first call for More broadly, business needs graduates who are applications is open, and I have to say they are proving comfortable working with numbers and data as well extremely popular. as having the ability to write and to argue critically. This programme of work has been superbly led for the Academy by Sir Ian Diamond FBA,2 and we have Do British Academy Small Research produced a number of reports that have, in my view, Grants remain as popular as ever? significantly influenced policy. ‘Small Research Grants’ sounds a bit pejorative. The maximum award is £10,000, which is a small sum in Your remit as Vice-President also covers the terms of research funding, but these grants really do British Academy’s research funding schemes. have a value beyond the number of pounds. They can start people off on a trail, or can help them finish off In money terms, the British Academy’s portfolio something: so they can be pump-priming, or they can of research funding schemes has grown out of all help people sunset a project. recognition. They are hugely valued by humanities and social Over the time that I’ve been actively involved in the science academics. At the time of the 2010 Spending

2 See Ian Diamond, ‘Interview’, British Academy Review, 31 (Autumn 2017), 11–16.

42 British Academy Review Spring 2019

Review, the then Department for Business, Innovation with other matters, as a truly shared enterprise between & Skills took the mistaken view that Small Research the Academy’s Fellows and its hugely talented and Grants were not ‘strategic’ and should not be paid for dedicated staff. out of public funding. The Leverhulme Trust stepped in with very generous sums of money to enable us to continue the scheme, and the British Academy’s own Fellows have also contributed to funding Small Research Grants. Happily, the current Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has been persuaded of the value of our Small Research Grants, and we are delighted and very grateful that there is now secured public funding for these awards.

We are now approaching a new government Spending Review. How is the British Academy preparing for that?

We will be collaborating with the other national academies to make a powerful statement about the value of continued public funding for academic research. We have been working together to show how the UK’s investment in research and development is distributed, and to collect evidence of how the benefits of research are measured.

What broader hopes do you have for the future of the British Academy?

Perhaps inevitably, we still elect people to become Further reading and viewing Fellows of the British Academy relatively late in their academic career. I do think that we need to do more for Some of Roger Kain’s books etc. those at the start of their career. And I have a fervent mentioned in the interview hope that, with a combination of will on our part and some of the Wolfson Foundation funding, we might see 1986 book: An Atlas and Index of the the development of a Young Academy. Tithe Files of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Very many European countries have Young England and Wales. Academies – indeed the Royal Society of Edinburgh has a Young Academy of Scotland. They provide an 1992 book, co-authored with Elizabeth opportunity for those earlier in their careers to come Baigent: The Cadastral Map in the Service together, to network, to do all the kinds of things that we of the State: A History of Property Mapping. as Fellows of the British Academy do, but in a separate space. We have talked about it for a while, and it would 1995 book, co-authored with Richard R. be wonderful if we could now give it a final push to make Oliver: The Tithe Maps of England and it happen. Wales: A cartographic analysis and county- More generally, I would hope to see, in 10 years’ time, by-county catalogue. a more diverse British Academy than it is currently. We have worked to improve the gender balance, but we still 2004 book, co-authored with John Chapman have further to go. We’ve hardly started on ethnicity. And and Richard R. Oliver: The Enclosure Maps the geographical diversity across the United Kingdom of England and Wales 1595–1918. Electronic needs to be considered too. We are over-concentrated catalogue maintained by UK Data Archive in some areas, and does that properly reflect where (essex.ac.uk/em/index.html). excellence lies? It is good to see that the Academy is now grappling with these issues in a very serious way and, as 2015 book, co-authored with Richard R. Oliver: British Town Maps: A History. Electronic Catalogue of British Town Maps (townmaps.data.history.ac.uk/).

43 British Academy-supported researchers Picturing others

Annabel Tremlett illustrates how everyday images can challenge stereotypes of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller people

iscrimination against Roma, Gyp- Angéla is also from a Roma background), sy or Traveller people is often said started to call our special issue the ‘espe- to be the last ‘respectable’ form of cially depressing issue’, as the persistence D racism,1 with the use of offensive of racism against Roma in the media from terms and blatant prejudicial comments so many different outputs and countries prevalent and uncontested in many pub- was relentless. We realised that there lic spheres. Stereotypes of these commu- seemed to be nothing else on offer to the © The British Academy Dr Annabel Tremlett is a Senior nities have a strong visual element: from public about Roma people apart from Lecturer in Social Work at the the glitzy world of elaborate Traveller these negative images, and in turn, this is University of Portsmouth. weddings, to the impoverished beggars what we were offering in our journal. We from Romania on London streets, or the therefore decided to include three articles unauthorised encampments of Travellers’ in our special issue written by profession- caravans surrounded by spewing rubbish. al Roma from varying backgrounds, on Such images are heavily selected, edited, how they negotiate and challenge prom- sensationalised, and often unrepresenta- inent racism. These articles showed that tive of the majority of people from these Roma people are not just the passive vic- communities, yet are the ones circulat- tims of racism, but confront and change ed again and again in our media. So how the way Roma people are perceived. can such entrenched stereotypes be chal- However, whilst this special issue lenged? What would a ‘non-stereotypical’ showed the agency of Roma people in re- image of Roma people look like? sisting racism, there was still the question These are the questions asked by a of how the public image of Roma people current British Academy Small Research could be challenged – what could be a Grant project, led by myself, Dr Anna- visual alternative to ingrained negative bel Tremlett at the University of Ports- stereotypes? I knew, from my own re- mouth, in partnership with John Oates search on the everyday lives of Roma peo- from the Open University. The basis for ple in Hungary, that they have a lot of joy the project was a question I grappled with and warmth in their lives, even in difficult when co-editing a special issue of Iden- times. I’ve been visiting the same town tities journal in 2017, entitled ‘Romapho- in Hungary for nearly two decades now bia and the media’. Working with Roma (including over four years of living there). and non-Roma authors, the special issue This has put me in a very privileged po- aimed at exposing and deconstructing sition of seeing those who were children some of the entrenched racism against at the start of my research (around 7 or 8 Roma across the media in Europe – which years of age) growing up – they are now in can at times be very stark and direct, and their mid-20s. Over the years I’ve asked at other times nuanced and insidious. them to take pictures of their everyday Myself and my co-editors, Vera Messing lives, and then interviewed them on that and Angéla Kóczé (both from Hungary, basis (a research method called ‘photo

1 Sir Trevor Philips, then Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, 2004.

44 - - - - 45 The second held at exhibition was We are still the feedback are analysing We Our British Academy-supported pro British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British ject runs until August 2019. One of the of One ject 2019. August until runs main findings to so far is that, in order stereotypes,break down need engage we must peopleof think not just as We ment. others as ourselves, but and must look at our shared each to other, relate we how histories, identities and experiences. In perhaps, of Roma, the lives some ways, people seemGypsy very and Traveller might total- we in otherdistinctive; ways, them. The important to relate is ly thing recognise to people have who humans, as difficulties, self-respect, humour, dignity, frustrations, struggles, in complex or ba- we can yet can be different, We nal lives. also connect ways. in so many ed members audience collages create to representto of the images their views on display. Portsmouth 2018. of end the at Guildhall images our from displaying As as well research, alsoown fantastic we gathered examples and of anti-racism campaigns projects Gypsy Roma, and Traveller from organisationsand independent photogra- forget Ports that also didn’t phers.We - Trav mouth itself is a city that has many families at the hearteller and Romani of its were community and histories: we permission show to very pleased have to photosone of storiesand family the from most famous boxers, of Portsmouth’s Smith. Johnny Traveller have exhibitions, but we the two from found the experience of interacting with audience memberstheir and asking for opinions fascinating. Overall, the collages and other response audience sheets pro complex and how vide a means show to responses images to multi-layered of a marginalised minority can be. - - What I love about the I love What are just of everyday lives – lives just of everyday are photographs is the way they they is the way photographs pictures any of us might take any pictures The first was a photography exhibition The firstwas a photography We found that images our field- from We at the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Lon- draw to The aim was 2018. don in June attitudespeople as out of their passive active into them transform and viewers, invit participants We in a shared world. Exhibitions As a part holding project of our are we these images.display exhibitions to We asking our audiencesare (some of whom Gypsy also Roma, or Traveller are from responses for backgrounds) them, bothto encourage test and to new to our analysis discussionsthe ‘non-stereotypi - around cal’. fect the of each, and then thinks through We also in- effect of the image as a whole. of pow- awareness cluded in our analysis on the inequality drawing and racism, er, of cultural theorists and work Paul Gilroy Stuart build our understanding to Hall of racialised, how and fixed stereotypical minorities reproduced are views of Roma beand continue to circulated. still, at times, work so-called contain stereotypical traits – such as run-down with dirtybuildings, children faces and adults – that denote passive no guardians, stereotypes backward of the the negative, started understand we to However, Roma. that some images differences had definite found four the usual stereotypes.from We - promi main elements from that differed nent stereotypes, and these illustrated are on pages 46–53. - in people, using a theoretically of Roma on the work that draws formed framework analystsof visual Ledin Per and David deconstructsMachin. This approach the people, places, – e.g. image activ- content perspectives and materials, ities, colour, – and analyses the symbolicemployed ef ------These photos have becomeThese in powerful photos have Small Research The British Academy What I love about the photographs they What I love ing, bikes, mending looking pets, after posinggrans, their to talking ‘self for This us might take. ies’ – pictures of any the struggles people take away doesn’t can face with poor housing, dilapidated streets, very wages precarious and racism theseall – - lives adversi everyday their in ties came out in the interviews. But these the urge images us that people show have in the best their lives live and vitality to tough in really if that’s they can, even way circumstances. imagine at the start. I certainly didn’t ways productsThey are of self-representations dis people given are – the children/young posableand they choose cameras, what This means they take photographs of. the image-makers,that they are which is people sounusual for Roma who are often misrepresented others. by Well-meaning documentary makers and photographers romanticise exoticiseor to tend pro or shots that are voyeuristic’ duce ‘poverty very depressing; media to outlets tend criminalise or demonise people. It’s Roma lives everyday see to rare quite ‘ordinary’, as seen the people by themselves. take a long look me to Grant has allowed at these images, alongside those pro Oates, John project partner, my duced by the psychologist from a developmental carries John out activist Open University. was a consult he (for example, fieldwork ant on setting of the UK ‘Sure up a version Start’Hungary).programme in also He of Roma lives documents the everyday people, exhibitions and films leading to in- invaluable which give such as Vortex, sights the complex challenges into that peopleRoma they survive. face and how the project, a researchThrough hired we associate, Sanna Nissinen, who has ex pertise in the ethics pho of humanitarian usedand non-gov- charity in tography ernmental reports. of us set The three about of our field- hundreds analysing lives photographs of the everyday work elicitation’). I alsoreflect to ask them on elicitation’). photograph projects,previous soI get sense real a see they how of lives their changing, represent to they want how and me as a researcher, themselves to think of the choiceswhat they they’ve have life events or how made in their lives impacted on them. justevery they are of - produce is the way – families larking about lives having day fun, people on their homes, working cook

© The British Academy British Academy-supported researchers Other ways of picturing...

01 — Everyday activities

Showing people as active in their everyday lives, even in very poor circumstances, contrasts with public images that tend to show Roma people as passive and parasitic.

A Roma man has asked his two friends from work (who are non-Roma) to fix his gate after some vandalism in the street.

46 British Academy Review Spring 2019

Two female friends sit in a courtyard, one is hugging her grandson. There are clothes hanging out to dry beside them. The photograph shows ordinary activities involved in taking care of family life, even when the backdrop looks dilapidated. In fact, when we looked at this photograph, the woman pictured with her grandson said (with laughter), ‘Oh no, [the courtyard] looks like a mess – when you show these pictures tell them we are in the middle of renovating it, otherwise they’ll think we’re slovenly Gypsies!’

Photos: taken by the daughter of one of the women; from Annabel Tremlett’s fieldwork.

47 British Academy-supported researchers 02 — Connection with the viewer

Many news images of Roma tend to show them as a faceless group, or looking sad or delinquent. Eye contact, or a sense of ‘being with’ (meaning a kind of intimacy), creates a connection with the viewer and breaks down power relations.

A couple pose with their young son in a ‘selfie’. Note the warmth from the closeness of the couple and the way the little boy is leaning into his father. This is also a mixed ethnicity relationship (the woman is Roma, the man non-Roma). Such unions are rarely discussed in public spaces, unless as an aberration or problem. In my experience, mixed couples were a common occurrence, and show that integration and connections between communities are lived out in the intimate lives of families.

Photo: from Annabel Tremlett’s fieldwork.

48 British Academy Review Spring 2019

Here we see a grandmother with her grandson – a private moment which shows their closeness. We can almost feel the warmth in the contact between their bodies and the soft feel of the child’s hair on his grandmother’s face. Photo: taken by John Oates from his fieldwork.

Photo: taken by John Oates from his fieldwork.

A mother and her two boys are enjoying an outdoor picnic provided by a local organisation. Exhibition audience members have said how they like the ordinariness of the scene and how the little boy is interacting with the camera man/viewer.

49 British Academy-supported researchers

Photos: self-representation taken by the mother of the little girl and partner of the man; from Annabel Tremlett’s fieldwork.

50 British Academy Review Spring 2019 03 — Being playful or funny

Everyday images taken by Roma people themselves are far more likely to be playful and funny than any public images, which tend to show Roma people as sad, deviant or criminalised. This humour creates an obvious connection with the viewer and creates another way Roma people can be seen, rather than just as hapless victims.

A father and child have fun posing in sunglasses with a mobile phone. We can imagine the little girl is either copying her father, or has ‘ordered’ her father to pose in the same way as her! Images of Roma fathers with their children are rare in the public sphere, giving substance to the idea that Roma fathers are absent and uninterested in their children.

51 British Academy-supported researchers 04 — Difficulties with dignity

To avoid falling into the trap of only showing ‘happy’ photographs of Roma people (which may detract from the often devastating circumstances they face), the phrase ‘difficulties with dignity’ emerged from our analysis as a means to show people in tough situations, but without them being shown as wretched. Which images came into this category was not always agreed on by our research team – the concept of ‘dignity’ itself in photography has been described as ‘amorphous and its use uncertain’ (Langmann & Pick).

A mother and child sit on a bed. Though the backdrop is bare and impoverished, the woman is engaged, confident, talking to someone off camera, while her baby is protected on her lap and looks well cared for and relaxed.

Photo: taken by John Oates from his fieldwork.

52 British Academy Review Spring 2019

Photo: taken by John Oates from his fieldwork.

Two children look out of a window and a third is leaping on the bed to join them. There is a sense of despair with the children alone in this dilapidated room, but the light from the window and the children looking out does give some hope. There is a lot more to the story behind the image, but our audience members said that even without knowing the story, this image is very powerful in showing the conditions that some Roma children face.

53 British Academy-supported researchers Time out!

Ayşe Üskül and Michelle Ryan applaud the transformative impact of the British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship scheme © The British Academy

s researchers progress in their chelle Ryan from the University of Exeter careers, they face a growing and the University of Groningen, have number of challenges. There are each benefited from a British Academy A increasing expectations to take Mid-Career Fellowship that has enabled on teaching and administrative duties, them to focus their time on finishing pro- which require greater responsibility and jects and establishing new research ideas. initiative, growing numbers of students In this article, they share their experi- Ayşe K. Üskül is Professor of Social and postdoctoral fellows to supervise, ences of having that much-needed break Psychology at the University of Kent. more and more time spent on external from the daily demands of academic life, roles, such as journal editing. For some, and describe what this has meant for their family responsibilities get added to research careers. the mix. Although it might sound positive and Ayşe exciting, these increasing duties can Shortly after finishing my PhD, I secured mean less time for research, writing, a postdoctoral fellowship, awarded to me thinking, and reading. Studies that need by the Social Sciences and Humanities to be written up for publication start to Research Council of Canada. It funded accumulate. And mid-career academics two years at the Institute of Social and Michelle Ryan is Professor of find themselves yearning for some un- Economic Research, University of Michi- Social and Organisational interrupted time that will give them the gan, where I had uninterrupted research Psychology at the University of head space they need to run their projects time, free from teaching and administra- Exeter, and (part-time) Professor through the finish line. tive duties. It was wonderfully enriching, of Diversity at the University of Two social psychologists, Ayşe Üskül and I realise as I look back that the experi- Groningen, The Netherlands. from the University of Kent, and Mi- ence shaped the direction of my academic

54 - - - 55 These publications were highly instruThese highly - were publications In addition, the Academy’s scheme al- In addition, the Academy’s Mid-CareerThe British Academy - Fel establish me to as a Allowing myself British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British time to finish off this project,off this finish time to that time could not existing be easily planned in my Mid-Careerschedule. A British Academy academ- the for me to awarded Fellowship rescue. used I my to came 2013–14 ic year additional run the every moment of it to multi-study studiestwo pa- and prepare pers journal the top in for submission to field – eventually were bothwhich my of published there. establishmental in helping me as myself a researcher at the intersection who works and human of the economic environment a domino effect, ledthis And to behaviour. in number grow publications making my they and scientificFor example, impact. review formed influential an of basis the contrib to invitations several led to piece, ute chapters edited and mostute to volumes, edit a special to an invitation to recently issue on socio-ecological psychology. spend- me to time reading the rel lowed disciplines in different literature evant get do during normal to I hardly (which times). see enabledThis working to me the connections disci between different - they approach plines how to with regard in hu- of economicthe role environment identify strengths man psychology and to in existingthe of limitations and work Thesefield. this observations laid the foundations of a multidisciplinary book project which I co-edited and published Press in 2018 (So-with Oxford University and human psy cioeconomic environment chology:Social, and cultural ecological, and Oishi). edited by Uskul perspectives, alsolowship helped me make connec- tions outside of academia. As part of the I co-organisedFellowship, a research im- pact titled ‘Researching event Social Ex for Public Policy and clusion: Relevance the opportunity me and it gave Practice’, both network to with key academics doing research on social researchers exclusion and with non-academic agencies working samethe in meetingThe area. includ- ed presentations the Three Faiths from Schools Linking CID, Greenwich Forum, Age UK, the McPinNetwork, Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Coun- Equalitythe and cil, RightsHuman and Commission. successful mid-career researcher with academia, the links within and beyond Mid-CareerBritish Academy Fellowship a European to Research the way paved - - I had justhad I researchfinished a project completion of a majorcompletion piece of research and the dissemination of its findings. Small Re a British Academy (funded by search adults examined Grant) that how respondand children social to exclusion communitiesin farming and herding in - col I had already north-eastern Turkey. lected data for a series of studies funded grant, but I was British Academy the by asked journal by editors collect to more clarify some to data in order of the unre solved issues in the existing studies. This trips more the region (which required to be scheduledhad to carefully take ac- to count of seasonal changes in weather analyseto new time conditions), more write-updata, and more time for dissem- ination. That meant that I needed extra - - - - Yet it did. In the midst it did. In the of juggling a Yet Professor Ayşe Üskül, shown here on a 2018 field trip to rice field trip to on a 2018 here shown Üskül, Ayşe Professor different how into villages in Japan, conducts research farming shape social cognition, conceptions of self, settings cultural relationships. and interpersonal quently told that I should cherish every that I should told quently as a similar op fellowship, my moment of portunity come most never would likely again. way my academic partner work with my family institution in a different ing at a different being practically mothersingle a to city, study leave lost my an infant, and having needed pro off finish terribly I to (which jects)instione - from transition the during anotherchanging jobs, to tution to due I found out about the Mid-Career- Fellow It ship scheme of the British Academy. been designedseemed exactly to have to support who needed academics like me, teaching normal and ad- time off from commitments focus to on the ministrative career immensely. At the time, I was fre I was the time, At career immensely.

© The British Academy British Academy-supported researchers

Council (ERC) application. ERC schemes this project, which will start in September was awarded my PhD (2004), I secured a are designed to support individual re- 2019, I will be able to ask novel questions, Research Councils UK (RCUK) Academic searchers to carry out scientifically ex- and explore them in unresearched set- Fellowship – a terrific (although unfor- cellent projects, at a larger scale and tings, using multiple methods. tunately now defunct) scheme that was with greater impact. In the Consolidator The British Academy Mid-Career Fel- designed to help postdoctoral researchers scheme, the ERC looks for ‘investigators lowship came at a very critical period in secure a permanent position. The RCUK who must have already shown research my career, when I was going through mul- fellowship funded part of my salary for independence and evidence of maturity’. tiple transitions as a female academic. It 5 years, which facilitated my transition The Academy’s support had helped me to provided a refuge for me to concentrate into an academic role. It was a wonderful achieve exactly this. and continue working on my research, opportunity, giving me the security of a My application to the ERC Consolida- without which I possibly would have permanent position, with the concentrat- tor Scheme in 2016 was evaluated posi- slowed down significantly – to the degree ed research time of a postdoctoral fellow. tively, but didn’t get funded. Two years that an ERC application (and success) In this period I had my son (in 2008), and later, I submitted a significantly revised would have been an unreachable goal. the RCUK kindly extended my fellowship application, and in October 2018 I heard for the length of my 6-month maternity good news. This ERC funding will allow Michelle leave. me to conduct my dream project. Collect- If I think about what has been most Within a year of my fellowship ending, ing data in 12 different locations, with a helpful for me throughout my academ- I had agreed to take on a 3-year adminis- focus mostly on cultural groups around ic career, number one on my list would trative role, as Associate Dean (Research) the Mediterranean, I will examine the role definitely be the excellent mentors and for our faculty, overseeing the 2014 Re- that honour plays in how people co-op- colleagues with whom I have had the search Excellence Framework (REF) re- erate with others, how they compromise privilege to work. But a very close second turns for five very different disciplinary in decision-making situations, and how would be the fellowship grants that I have ‘Units of Assessment’. This was an excit- they apologise for wrongdoings. Through been lucky enough to hold. The year I ing challenge, which I enjoyed enormous-

Professor Michelle Ryan is conducting research into the role of identity in the work-life balance.

56 British Academy Review Spring 2019

ly; but the burden of the REF and raising solidator scheme throughout 2015 (in a small boy as a single parent took its toll. between many Dean meetings), submit- My research – which looked at the ‘glass ted it early 2016, and was awarded it in cliff’ and women’s leadership positions in November 2016. That ERC funding has times of crisis – still continued, but it was allowed me to take my research to the in dire need of an injection of time and next level. It has given me 5 years of time energy. The British Academy Mid-Career that I can dedicate almost exclusively to Fellowship scheme seemed to fit the brief research and mentoring, and has enabled perfectly. I was lucky enough to be award- me to bring together an exceptional team ed a Fellowship for the 2014 calendar year. of early-career researchers to work on an The Mid-Career Fellowship allowed integrated programme of research. It has me space to step down from the Associate also given me time to travel and work with Dean role (once the REF documents had inspiring research groups across Europe been submitted), and to have the courage and more widely. to start a new line of research. While our But none of this would have been possi- work on the glass cliff was exciting and ble without the British Academy Mid-Ca- rewarding, I knew I needed to broaden reer Fellowship. It paved the way – giving my research agenda and try something me intellectual space, giving me practical new. I used the full year of uninterrupt- time to write and analyse data, and giving ed research time to develop, somewhat me the opportunity to make and strength- ironically, a new approach to work-life en collaborative networks. But most of all balance – conceptualising it as balancing it gave me confidence – the confidence to identity (who one is at home, and who try something new, and the confidence to one is at work) instead of just balancing build on those new ideas and take them time. The Fellowship allowed me space forwards. to draft a theoretical paper on identity The British Academy Mid-Career and work-life balance, to analyse complex Fellowship is an excellent initiative. organisational data sets on fit and work- A scheme that identifies researchers fac- life balance that had been languishing on ing obstacles in their career paths, and my computer for years, and to prepare a provides them with what they need – TedEx talk on to present these ideas to the which is mostly just time – is bound to British Academy Mid-Career public. breed future success. The two of us are Fellowships are funded by the The British Academy award also ena- living examples of how career-defining Department for Business, bled me to travel, to extend my network this can be. Energy & Industrial Strategy. of collaborators – in particular, visiting Cordelia Fine at Melbourne, Tori Brescoll at Yale, and Madeline Heilman at NYU. And it allowed me to establish connec- tions with industry collaborators, such as EY and the NHS. Through these col- laborations we developed and extended A scheme that identifies the analysis of work-life balance to begin thinking about how context and identity researchers facing might shape other career attitudes, such as those around ambition and risk-taking. This time and space, which allowed me obstacles in their career to explore new and innovative research ideas, was truly a career-enhancing op- paths, and provides portunity. I took on a new leadership role in my university at the end of the Fellow- them with what they ship, becoming Dean of Post-Graduate Research and establishing the University need – which is mostly just of Exeter Doctoral College. However, the new research ideas that we developed during the Fellowship lay a clear founda- time – is bound to breed tion for opportunities ahead. Indeed, they led directly to an application for an ERC future success. Consolidator grant, expanding on the ide- as of how context and identity shape and constrain women’s career choices. I prepared the application for the Con-

57 British Academy-supported researchers New tools for new research questions and answers

Brett Greatley-Hirsch and James Baker talk to the British Academy Review about the potential of digital research in the humanities © The British Academy

dvances in computing have ry and prose from the late Elizabethan to changed the nature and scope the early Jacobean period. The aim is to of the work we do in the hu- find out whether a specific literary genre ‘A manities,’ says Dr Brett Great- affects an author’s style, and, if so, how ley-Hirsch. ‘It’s not just a matter of ef- significant these differences are. He -ex ficiency – i.e., doing what we’ve always plains: ‘It’s about testing a longstanding done, only faster. Nor is it simply a matter assumption that genre affects style – an of scale – i.e., doing what we’ve always assumption that currently hampers au- done, only bigger. Computing enables thorship attribution study.’ us to ask questions that were simply in- It is only thanks to the recent de- Dr Brett Greatley-Hirsch is University conceivable for previous generations of velopment of new technology that Dr Academic Fellow in Textual Studies and scholars.’ Greatley-Hirsch can attempt this kind of Digital Editing at the University of Leeds. Dr Greatley-Hirsch, University Aca- research. The sophisticated searches en- demic Fellow in Textual Studies and Dig- abled by the combination of large-scale ital Editing at the University of Leeds, is digitisation projects and natural language among the first recipients of the British processing now allow scholars not only to Academy’s new Digital Research in the trace the histories of generic forms, like Humanities (DRH) grants. Awarded at the novel, sonnet or sermon, but also to the end of 2018, in partnership with Jisc, investigate what Daniel Shore has termed the grants fund innovative research that ‘the genealogy of syntactic forms’. ‘The applies new digital methods and tools to difference,’ explains Dr Greatley-Hirsch, existing digital resources in order to yield ‘is whether you are studying the history of Dr James Baker is Senior Lecturer in new insights. a specific phrase – e.g. “but me no buts” Digital History and Archives at the For his project, Dr Greatley-Hirsch – or a broader phraseological unit – e.g. University of Sussex. will be using statistical procedures and “(verb) me no (noun)” – or more general machine-learning techniques associated syntactic structure – e.g. “(verb) (pro- with computational stylistics to analyse noun) (adjective) (noun)”.’ various samples of English drama, poet- Dr James Baker, Senior Lecturer in

58

------59 Working with his co-investigator Dr Working what is it aboutGeorge’s Dorothy So, ‘Every scholar who has used a “Golden project, it As with Dr Greatley-Hirsch’s a be lucky enough to invited ‘I was British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British Digital History and Archives at the at HistoryDigital Archives and Sussex, of another is University DRH and his colleagues He are grant-holder. the catalogueexamining of personal and political satirical prints produced the by Maryhistorian George Dorothy the for and 1954. British Museum between 1930 These political and social prints cover topics and everything in between. ‘The politicalbe to prints re ephemeral tend sponses to political dramas of the day,’ sponses political to dramas of the day,’ ‘while social the Baker, Dr satires says topics with a longstanding cover to tend appealjokes instance, for – about gouty priests, fashions, and roguish ridiculous on stereotypes.’ Irishmen that draw combine traditional to Salway Andrew with corpus linguistic meth- work archive ods, Dr Baker hopes a general- develop to isable toolset of for understanding works this kind. He is also looking at individual types within Dorothy and groups of words the his how – analysing archive George’s she which words usedtorian the words, used she intro them, and how around quotations. duced various that sowork interests Dr Baker? satirical Mary print is indebted to Age” ‘Her descrip he says. George,’ Dorothy tions of satirical prints a substantive are their of scholarship work elevated that subjects canonical status histo among to rians of long-18th-century British histo In turn, both the prints and George’s ry. beendescriptionsintegral of them have studies politics,to of print, culture, and social life in Georgian Britain. Whether in book or online, form, on microfilm, George has been a constant interlocutor - between the historian and this remarka ble era of graphic reproduction.’ in technologyis recent developments that made Dr Baker’s researchhave possible. Theseparticularly developments, relat imageing to search and recognition, are of special Dr Baker. interest to for somedo ago to years of couple work project anotherby run British Academy a colleague in Edinburgh called Anouk running some ‘She was he says. Lang,’ on digital methods,workshops and she do somethingasked me to on computa- tional image recognition. I found then had just hit the point that we there where open sourcewere toolsets that I could veryuse goodinstall.and They were at , published by Hannah Humphrey in 1791, is one in 1791, Hannah Humphrey , published by ressource derniere La James Gillray’s and in the Catalogue Political of George Dorothy prints described by 12,500 of over in the British Preserved in the Department Satires Prints and Drawings of Personal 4.0). Museum. Image: British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA

© The British Academy © The British Academy ------were talking to Joe Christmas. talking to were Brett Greatley-Hirsch and James Baker and James Baker Greatley-Hirsch Brett ‘History and art history will change as ‘Understanding digital research meth- So digital history are posts in- to likely partly be ‘I would sure. Dr Baker isn’t had a range of dif ‘History has always More broadly, Dr Greatley-Hirsch be More broadly, ‘“Displace” may be the wrong word,’ be word,’ wrong the may ‘“Displace” ferent methods that people have used. methods A ferent that people have recent methodological towards turn was oral histories, but people do not describe history his themselves as being “oral an their areas to more They still refer torian”. interest.of historical disciplines start with when we working contemporarymore sources. The intro duction in the 1990s of home computers huge – and since then our archives was become digital. more increasingly have Historians will need be adept to more at or a personal archives, using large ar- web notmight that be seriesa chive boxesof instead. That will be the drive but a hard most natural tipping point.’ lieves the adoption of digital research methods offers an important opportunity encourage interdisciplinaryto truly re search. odshumanitiesthe in alsois necessarya ourselves, preparing our and towards step students, in which for a changing world the digital is fast becoming the primary means creation, dissemina of cultural - preservation.and tion, meansThis that our disciplines and promote value should types as different numeracy as well of lit eracy.’ the to and, more crease go the years by, as point, that be would a good thing? dig- saying out of a job by putting myself ital history posts should not be he there!’ imagined that in always ‘But I have says. not be. time they would tion.’ approaches? Dr Greatley-Hirsch. ‘It perpetuatessays a fearof mechanisation, of being replaced goes convinced machines,by which I’m the resistance explain to to some way digital scholarship certain from quarters. Something is more closer “augment” to be a becauseaccurate, will always there space and need- for traditional approach things- are that ma there es. Put simply, chines do that human beings can cannot especially also– but the reverse is true, of lan- when it comes interpretation to guage and expression,thought and emo - - - - - There are also are There challenges associated ‘There going be to are some real chal- need be to energy and time spent ‘We what do the researchersSo, lies think observe inputs the and study out and of the modputs, but the inner workings - essentially them are el that transforms Humanitiesunknown. scholars will no doubt deeply find this lack of explanation frustrating.’ with capturing and processing informa- we Asage. tion in the digital a society, than day information in one more create which, Dr before, created ever have we means historians of the fu- Baker the says, be to well-versed in digital have will ture with the newestmethods date and up to toolsets. ‘Though he says. a largeis there lenges,’ in public which amount of information Tumblr and is at risk – things on Twitter, Geocities, projects are for example – there trying capture that. But the task of cap to turing personal is going re to archives an enormous amount of investment quire been have Archivists in infrastructure. doing an amazing job in very embattled trying a decade, circumstances to for over methods capturingfor develop personal for the person in with archives: who walks not a stack papers. of is a There a laptop, de lot on that individual of information but becausevice, of the difficult nature not they are with that device, of working take too able to much of that material. supportthinking about we how the crea- of personal digital archives tion of broad papers of that kind.’ for humanitiesin store research general- digital re towards seely? Will we a pivot search methods, might what extent to and these methods traditional displace more - preparing ourselves, and our and ourselves, preparing methods in the humanities is also a necessary step towards also a necessary towards step students, for a changing world for students, Understanding digital research But as impressive as this may be, Dr be, may this as impressive as But sort the of networks used ‘Neural in ‘But what is interesting to me is that me is that ‘But what is interesting to aboutthink to is exciting it me, ‘For of this kind of tech- The development 60 ceived wisdom. ceived Greatley-Hirsch points out that the use of artificial intelligence presents a challenge thoseto in the humanities working that is perhapsdisciplinary more technical. than deep the so-called learning exemplify can ‘We he says. “black box” problem,’ finding images where there were two two were finding images there where prints of very things. similar could They sometimes pick out generic landscape scenes, and they could just about work mostthat out landscapes on church had a mid- the in tree a and right the or left the was actu That - and that kind of stuff. dle, at the time because, exciting quite at ally the very finding matches. least, it was Every this technology is changing rapidly. months, it for a few from time I step away I look at it again and find that there back advances. massive are doing are we the work can take we how with language describe to an image and that is going on join it up with the work how vision end around at the computer look which out at an imagefigure and you parts which.’ are nology has occurred in tandem with the rise of artificial intelligence, especially concept a which rose to learning’, ‘deep Alpha- Google’s when 2015 in fame wider Go became the first program computer defeatto a Go champion. Alpha- world deep learning model Go mastered by Go’s competing in thousands of games against it has In just a few years, human players. winning introduced a series of innovative centuries and overturned moves of re British Academy-supported researchers Academy-supported British

61 Undertaking re-enactmentshistor- of British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British Early English Church Music series. Church English Early emy’s of past life-styles, even ical events, has becomenow a familiar phenomenon at of and with a diversity of levels a variety education including pastime, intentions, and entertainment. Some of that activity is informed significant investigation by and serious research. What distinguished project was ‘The ExperienceWorship’ of directthe participation researchthe of - ers themselves in the enactment of the research rituals. In addition to medieval informing performance, performance became an essential mode of research. engagementSuch otherall like – forms of historical enquiry – requires the use of imagination, recognition of restrictions case– in the and limitations, and of litur- gical enactment – the compromises- deter mined the actualities by of location and buildings used medieval The late time. for the enactment of these liturgies are busy places timetables with their own and - - he landscape is still of Britain stud- churches ded medieval with late restoredand cathedrals, often or refashioned, but still used for T John Harper a story of evidence, tells John imagination and realisation Exploring medieval medieval Exploring in medieval liturgy churches worship by the few and visited in great by worship worship Neither numbers the many. by per has much idea of the ritual nor visitor practices shaped that originally the build- ings, or of the experience medieval of late Back within the space. worship in 2011 an opportunity was a there encounter to Latinseries liturgies medieval of late in buildings: contrasting medieval late two Salisbury church Cathedral, and the tiny History Muse in the National of St Teilo These outside Cardiff. um at St Fagans - formed of the AHRC/ESRC-fund the core ed research project, ‘The Experience of Cathedral and medieval in late Worship That research is proceed- Parish Church’. ing and still bearing fruit, most recently in the two-volume editionof the of Mass of Blessed Virgin Mary Use to the according Salisbury, published in the British Acad- research project. research emeritus professor at Bangor at Bangor emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham, of Birmingham, at the University John Harper is honorary professor professor John Harper is honorary the Royal School of Church Music. Music. School of Church the Royal He led ‘The Experience of Worship’ He led ‘The Experience of Worship’ University, and emeritus director of and emeritus director University,

British Academy publications Academy British © The British Academy We are still unpacking the outcomes and taking forward new questions raised. The intensity of the period of enact- ments between May and October 2011 was the culmination of 18 months of preparation and making. Apart from the administrative complexity, there was a Tudor organ to be commissioned and built; furniture and vestments researched and made; and a series of necessary ar- tefacts either identified or constructed. We worked with more than 20 artists and craftspeople; for instance, no less than five of them were involved in making and decorating the Pax Board based on the survival at St Andrew’s Church, Sandon, Essex. Archaeological remains, archi- val documentation and iconography in- formed the making of the organ, benches, stools, pyxes and cruets. Medieval brasses of priests provided details of vestments. The relocated and recreated interior of the church of Questions had to be addressed: discus- St Teilo, National History Museum, St Fagans. sion with Jeremy Glenn, who made the furniture, asked questions about seat height, posture and the physical process- es of sitting and standing which extended into the enactments. Similar issues arose in practice regarding the constraints of clothing on movement and posture. None of the makers was instructed to copy; working from a model or mod- els where possible, and using traditional skills and materials, they were encour- aged to be imaginative and creative. In some cases there were unexpected out- comes. Fleur Kelly, engaged to paint the organ case, immediately saw the oppor- tunities afforded by two plain oak doors that protected the metal pipework when not in use. On the outside she envisaged two angels about to open the doors; and when opened, she imagined an Annun- ciation scene on the left, and a Nativity scene on the right. She raised additional funds herself to realise her concept, there- by creating an instrument that is visual- Newly constructed Tudor organ by Goetze and Gwynn, painted by ly as well as aurally striking – revealing Fleur Kelly and Lois Raine. Photo: Adrian Holgeth. images of the harmony between God and humankind expressed in the Incarnation, demands. Furthermore, although Salis- worship in a medieval space, we were al- and sounds of divine harmony perceived bury Cathedral retains its 13th-century ways clear that we were enacting rituals in music by medieval thinkers. profile, it has been subject to internal in the present: we did not pretend to be Use of artefacts also led to new explo- change over the centuries; and St Teilo’s people in the late Middle Ages. Clergy, ration. Two double-sided lecterns, one Church, having become derelict in the their assistants, singers, organ player, and based on that at Ranworth with desks of 1980s, has been moved over 50 miles east those taking the part of the congregation different heights, encouraged us to gath- from a site just south of Pontarddulais to were asking questions related to their own er singers round a single book. The oc- St Fagans Museum, and re-erected, fur- specific role in and experience of medie- ular focus on a single text changed the nished and decorated as it might have val liturgy, and reflecting on them in the dynamic of the singing group. Following been in the early 16th century. context of the whole ritual. Repeating the on from that, a great lectern has now been While the investigation was directed same liturgies over each of three days at made, large enough to hold a physical- to historical understanding of medieval St Fagans enable us to revisit and refocus. ly substantial book of chant, such as the

62 British Academy Review Spring 2019

Two Alleluya chants from Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary per annum: a page from the British Academy’s new Early English Church Music edition, with Hopyl typeface newly designed by Tim Symons, based on the 16th-century printed Gradual.

63 British Academy publications

Newly constructed great lectern in use, with the 15th-century Ranworth Antiphonal. Photo: Mark Cator.

15th-century Antiphonal at Ranworth some of the challenges faced by local par- Church, Norfolk, or one of the great pol- ish clergy, who lacked both the space and yphonic choirbooks from the early 16th human resources of Salisbury Cathedral. century, such as those in the libraries of The ritual of Salisbury (the so-called Use Caius College, Cambridge, Eton College, of Sarum) was used in over 7,000 church- and Lambeth Palace. es by the end of the Middle Ages, all var- Pragmatism and practicality had inev- ying from the cathedral and from one itably to be exercised. This was particu- another to a greater or lesser extent in larly true in the preparation of texts and configuration and resources. St Teilo’s is ritual directions for both clergy and sing- about an eighth of the length of Salisbury ers. Apart from limited time for rehearsal, Cathedral, yet the same texts and ritu- there was no hope of achieving the accu- al directions were to be followed in both mulated memory, mores, habits and con- buildings. Where did the priest of St Tei- ventions that medieval clergy and singers lo’s go in procession in a church without took for granted in their recitation of 60 or the choir aisles and cloisters that are part more liturgies each week. Recitation and of the directed route on great feast days? singing in Latin may have been attaina- Where, on days when the Gospel was to be ble, but rubrics had to be adapted and in recited from the pulpitum above the choir English. In the Mass, a medieval priest or screen, did the two clergy and three serv- singer was used to turning to at least three ers specified undertake this ritual when parts of the Missal or Gradual to find the the only access to the top of the screen necessary texts; these needed to be placed was a ladder – bearing in mind that they in sequence. Even so, the three clergy, the were processing formally, wearing vest- four assisting servers, and the singers all ments and carrying either book, candle- have their own ritual narrative to follow; stick or thurible? The texts recited and the and only the priest and the singers have chants sung may have been identical, but, constant access to a text. Furthermore, notwithstanding the directions of the ru- up to five different actions may be taking brics, the ritual had to be adapted. place simultaneously. Clergy, singers and the furniture, vest- In all, three liturgies took place in Salis- ments and artefacts they required, formed bury Cathedral, including a major proces- one dimension of medieval worship at sion around the cathedral and cloisters; the east end of the church. The people and nine in St Teilo’s Church at St Fagans. formed the other dimension, unspecified The audio-visual recordings provide a in number, and largely unscripted, in the record not of polished performances but nave. Most of the participants in the en- of a fluent working through of these ritu- actments were either engaged in master’s als. The procession and two Masses were or higher degrees or were research-active enacted in both buildings, and revealed staff, and most were practising Christians,

64 British Academy Review Spring 2019

though from a variety of denominations, tice-led research of the enactments. traditions and spiritualities. Freed from The edition is distinct in two ways. expectations to follow a book text or to Hitherto the Early English Church Music participate actively, they found them- series has focused on polyphonic mu- selves alert to a richer mix of the sensory, sic. The two new additions inaugurate a emotional, spiritual and intellectual qual- sub-series of volumes publishing chant ities of worship, including long periods and monophony. Further reading of silence during the Canon of the Mass; The edition also serves as a model of to use images or memorised devotional the operation of medieval liturgy by pre- The methods, processes and text as a focus, and to be enveloped by senting the relevant elements of five dis- outcomes of ‘The Experience of the whole experience of worship, thereby tinct liturgical books – Gradual (for choir Worship’ project can be explored discovering new means of participation. chant), Missal (for the priest), Custom- further in Late Medieval Liturgies Certain moments of engagement proved ary (for ritual directions), Directory (to Enacted, edited by Sally Harper, P.S. especially significant, like the kissing of interpret the Calendar), and Ordinal (to Barnwell and Magnus Williamson the Pax Board by each person present, of- specify the precise contents of each Mass (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016; reissued in ten the nearest that medieval laity came according to day, season or feast) – in paperback, 2019). A comprehensive to contact with the consecrated bread and ways accessible to and usable by scholars, website, including audio-visual wine of the priest’s sacrifice. These were students and performers. What has often recordings of the enactments and experiences of 21st-century individuals, been assumed to be three seasonal forms performance texts, can be found at but they have offered new insights on the of Mass of the Virgin Mary turns out to experienceofworship.org.uk artefacts, decorative elements, and devo- have in excess of 60 variant orders. They tional texts of late medieval religion. lie latent within the two volumes. The edi- Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary The most recent outcome of ‘The Ex- tion serves as a more permanent element According to the Use of Salisbury perience of Worship’ project, the new edi- of a project that has sought to bring a new has been published by the British tion of Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, level of understanding of late medieval Academy in 2019 (Early English published in two volumes in the British cathedrals and churches – a remarkably Church Music, Volumes 59–60). Academy’s Early English Church Music prolific and important part of our medie- More information can be found series, is in its way a distillation of both val cultural heritage. via thebritishacademy.ac.uk/early- the underpinning traditional textual re- english-church-music search and the more experimental prac-

Salisbury Cathedral cloisters: procession before Mass as on a great festival, October 2011. Photo: Russell Sach.

65 © The British Academy

New Light on Light New Harrison Tony Hall Edith by Edited ISBN 978-0-19-726651-9 This is a landmark exploration of the lifetime and influence of one of Britain’s achievement most important study poets. This comprehensive helps and general students readers at all levels understandto a body of poetry that has changed personal and it is enriched by culture, insights major theyfrom poets how into and playwrights work. been influencedby Harrison’s have

Professor Marenbon John FBA, director of the Auctores education series,Britannici Medii Aevi writes: ‘Although learning people usually Latin, medieval were involved 13th-century instance, For linguisticblind to diversity. thinkers devised grammar without looking universal a Latin.beyond But not Roger Bacon. eccentric master at Paris turnedA cantankerous, Franciscan, whose long life almost spanned the 13th Bacon claimed his contemporaries had cut century, themselves the from off sources of wisdomby their translations and that the and Hebrew, ignorance of Greek his (misleadingly In inaccurate. they relied on were named) Compendium Philosophy, of of the Study Britannici editednewly and translated in the Auctores series,Medii Aevi Bacon also stressed the importance of insisting that everyacknowledging linguistic difference, educated person enough of other should know languages recogniseto and understand their vocabulary within the Latin texts they studied.’ Study of Philosophy Maloney S. Thomas by and translated Edited ISBN 978-0-19-726634-2 Compendium of the Roger Bacon: Roger 66

from the British Academy Academy the British from Recent publications publications Recent British Academy publications Academy British 67

British Academy Review Spring 2019 Spring Review Academy British Consul John Beecroft’s Consul John Beecroft’s Journal of his Mission 1850 Dahomey, to Law Robin by Edited ISBN 978-0-19-726653-3 BeecroftJohn appointed was Consul in the British promote to Africa in 1849, West suppress campaign to the government’s His first assignment trade. transatlantic slave a mission the kingdom to of was in this role of Bénin), the Republic Dahomey (in what is today to Gezo, King persuade attempt to to its ruler, from accept banning the export a treaty of slaves a his dominions. Although this mission was hitherto unpublished journal is Beecroft’s failure, an important source for the history of Dahomey, responsenot for its documentation only of Gezo’s British pressureto for abolition, but for its detailed description of the ceremonies of the of the the principal festival Customs’, ‘Annual Dahomian monarchy.

remains a masterpiece remains Furioso Orlando of Italian literature, and stands as a key of Italian literature, European ascontribution to Renaissance culture Its influence acrosswas a whole. the continent and the epic poem immediate and pervasive, the over continued wield enormous power to poets,imaginations of writers, artists and critics for generations in England. ISBN 978-0-19-726650-2 The Edited by Jane Everson, Everson, Jane by Edited Hiscock Jossa and Stefano Andrew Ariosto, the Orlando Ariosto, and Furioso English Culture Discover more: more: Discover All these British Academy from available are publications Press. University Oxford on the Academy’s information More via publications can be found thebritishacademy.ac.uk/british- academy-publications

© The British Academy From the archive From the Archive © The British Academy

The 1949 ‘Palace Revolution’ at the British Academy

68 British Academy Review Spring 2019

t the meeting of the British Acad- emy’s Council on Wednesday 6 February 1949, an early item of A business was the ‘Secretaryship’. The minutes record: The President reported that at an informal meeting of some of the members of the Council who had sent in suggestions on the subject it was decided to recommend that Dr. Mortimer Wheeler be invited to ac- cept the appointment. After discussion this recommen- dation was unanimously approved. … It was further suggested that Sir Frederic Kenyon should continue as Joint-Secretary for a time to carry on the more formal business of the office and to assist Dr. Wheeler in taking over the more responsible duties. The man identified as the appropriate successor to take over the running of the British Academy, Mortimer Wheeler FBA, later wrote: Exactly what happened I cannot re- cord at first hand; I was not at that time a member of the Council and © The British Academy had indeed been an absentee-Fel- low overseas since my election. But reliable report had it that at a meet- ing of the Council early in 1949 there had been a Palace Revolution. Sir Charles [Webster], unable to contain his impatience, had demanded unin- hibitedly a change in the Academy’s administration, and Kenyon with characteristic coolness and courtesy had taken the point. He expressed his intention to resign the Secretaryship Frederic Kenyon FBA, Secretary of the British Academy 1930–1949. forthwith and to look round for a suc- cessor. Wheeler wrote those words in 1970, to retire as Director of the British Muse- suggested that the main official function in The British Academy, 1949–1968 – his um. It can be conceded that fate had been of Fellows is to write obituary notices of own rather self-congratulatory memoir unkind to Kenyon: the Academy’s modest one another.’ Or as Wheeler later put it of his time as Secretary. His characterisa- annual grant from government had been bluntly: ‘In effect, the Academy was at a tion of what happened as being a ‘Palace cut during the economic crises of the standstill’. Revolution’ is a little unfair to his prede- 1930s and then again during the Second But a saviour was at hand. To quote cessor, Kenyon, in that the minutes of the World War. But in truth Kenyon lacked Wheeler again, ‘In the ranks of the Coun- previous Council meeting in October 1948 the networking skill and showmanship of cil there was one member who saw more clearly record that ‘The Secretary asked the first Secretary, Sir Israel Gollancz, who clearly than his colleagues: an honest, permission to retire from the Secretary- had conjured resources for the Academy sociable, fearless, scholarly, internation- ship, or at any rate from the more respon- in its earliest years. And the perception ally-minded son of Lancashire, the histo- sible part of its duties’. So there was no had grown that the institution lacked vi- rian Charles Webster. That name should actual need for a coup d’état to replace the tality. Indeed, in his July 1948 Presiden- be written large in the annals of the Acad- head of the administration. tial Address, Sir Idris Bell acknowledged emy.’ Sir Charles Webster had himself only But the British Academy certainly the existence of a ‘criticism brought been appointed to join the British Acad- needed shaking up. Sir Frederic Kenyon, against the Academy, both from within emy’s Council at the October 1948 meet- 86 years old at the time of the February and from without our ranks, … that our ing, but he clearly threw himself into the 1949 Council meeting, had been Secretary publications in the field of scholarship are pressing issue of the Secretaryship. Ac- of the British Academy since 1930 – when wholly insufficient, indeed, unworthy of a cording to his obituarist (Sir George Clark he had taken on the role as he was about body like ours; it has even been unkindly FBA, who was a witness to the events),

69 From the archive

Charles K. Webster FBA, President of the British Academy 1950–1954, and Mortimer Wheeler FBA, Secretary of the British Academy 1949–1968, shared an interest in reforming the British Academy – and in pipe smoking.

70 British Academy Review Spring 2019

for this ‘one piece of business which was mittee almost verbatim. And the minutes necessarily done behind closed doors … reveal that the designation of Sir Frederic Sir Charles Webster was the driving force. Kenyon as still being Joint-Secretary had His cheerful energy, his considerateness already been abandoned – though he re- and his single-minded attention to the tained for now his position as Treasurer. interests of the Academy earned their re- The changing of the guard was com- ward.’ plete when Council put forward Webster The reward was Mortimer Wheeler. to be the new President of the British After service in the Eighth Army com- Academy in the summer of 1950. And this manding an anti-aircraft brigade, fol- time it was Mortimer Wheeler who had lowed by senior archaeological responsi- done the plotting. ‘I was still a new boy bilities in India, Wheeler had returned to at the Academy, and conferred privately London in 1948. The Council meeting on 1 with my oldest friend, Sir Alfred Clapham, June 1949 began with a discussion of the who was a member of the Council. I put to initial length of Wheeler’s term of office him the name of Sir Charles Webster, lead- and of his salary, and confirmation that er of what I have called the Palace Revolu- Sir Frederic Kenyon would continue as tion, on the double or alternative plea that Joint-Secretary ‘for a time’. Then Wheeler Webster was plainly a man of courage and joined the meeting. He later wrote, ‘look- initiative, and/or that he would be some- ing round the table, [I] had no difficulty thing of a nuisance otherwise than in the in seeing what was wrong.’ The minutes presidential chair; to which he was duly reveal that Wheeler had come armed with and very properly elected.’ Wheeler and a list of ‘three matters which he had in Webster ‘became the closest of friends’, mind’, and which reveal his priorities for and together they ‘shared revolutionary change. He wanted ‘an Advisory Commit- ideas’ and ‘hatched dreadful plots’. tee of Fellows in or near London to assist Mortimer Wheeler’s time as Secretary him’, which was clearly intended to pro- of the British Academy, from 1949 to 1968, vide more incisive decision-making than did prove to be transformative. The Acad- Council itself provided; a membership emy’s events and publications activities of five was agreed – including Webster. blossomed. Its ability to fund research, Wheeler wanted to increase the staff- particularly in the humanities, expanded ing of the Academy – which at that time dramatically. And it was eventually able consisted of just one person, a Miss Doris to move to better accommodation in Burl- Pearson. And he wanted ‘an urgent appli- ington House. cation to the Treasury for an increased According to our current President, grant’. Sir David Cannadine, ‘The “Palace Revo- The Advisory Committee met on 23 lution” of early 1949 is truly a milestone in June 1949, and it drafted an agenda for the history of the British Academy, which change. It recommended fresh approach- owes Mortimer Wheeler a great deal. The es to the Academy’s traditional lecture issues he faced are recurring ones, and programme and the publication of papers we are determined to meet them with the in the annual Proceedings of the British same energy and ambition in our time as Academy. It raised Miss Pearson’s salary, he did in his own day.’ and lined up the recruitment of a Miss Molly Myers to assist her (Wheeler ‘stole’ Text by James Rivington her from an Egyptologist in Oxford). The Committee bemoaned ‘the inadequacy of the present rooms of the Academy’ in Burlington Gardens, and agreed to explore the possibility of a better home within Burlington House. But the item that was ‘discussed at length’ was ‘the present financial position of the Acad- emy’: how could the Academy position itself better to get more money from the Treasury, either as a channel for funds to other learned societies, or for the support of ‘specific pieces of work’. When the full Council met again for a ‘special meeting’ on 13 July, it adopted the recommendations of the Advisory Com-

71 Coming up

The British Academy Summer Showcase 2019

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Join us this June as we throw open Come along to a special late-night view our doors for our annual two-day of the Summer Showcase, a free festival Summer Showcase, a free festival of of ideas for curious minds. Explore the ideas for curious minds. Featuring 15 exhibits, enjoy talks and performances, interactive exhibits, alongside pop-up or simply relax with a drink at the bar. talks, workshops and performances, our Summer Showcase brings the best new Free, drop-in humanities and social sciences research to life. Drop in to meet the brightest All activities are on a minds in archaeology, art history, first come, first served basis politics and more, and explore eclectic exhibits designed to educate and inspire – from why our ancestors started to invent stone tools, to how 3D printing is changing lives. Discover more Free, drop-in (booking required for thebritishacademy.ac.uk/ school groups and groups over 8 people) summershowcase2019

72 No. 35 Spring 2019 The British Academy Officers of the British Academy ISSN 2047–1866 The British Academy © The British Academy 2019 10–11 Carlton House Terrace President The British Academy Review is London SW1Y 5AH Professor Sir David Cannadine licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- The British Academy, established Vice-Presidents NonCommercial-NoDerivatives by Royal Charter in 1902, is the Professor Dominic Abrams 4.0 International License. UK’s national academy for the Vice-President (Social Sciences) humanities and social sciences – The British Academy Review the study of peoples, cultures and Professor Ash Amin contains articles illustrating the societies, past, present and future. Foreign Secretary wide range of scholarship which the British Academy promotes Further information about the work Professor Roger Kain in its role as the UK’s national of the Academy can be found via Vice-President (Research academy for the humanities and thebritishacademy.ac.uk and Higher Education Policy) social sciences. Twitter: @britac_news Professor Aditi Lahiri Views of named writers are the Facebook: TheBritishAcademy Vice-President (Humanities) views exclusively of those writers; publication does not Revd Professor constitute endorsement by the Diarmaid MacCulloch Kt British Academy. Vice-President (Public Engagement)

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No. 35 Spring 2019 New Visions

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NO. — SPRING 2019 35 Annabel Tremlett Ash Amin on the on new ways British Academy’s of seeing international Roma people vision