The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture (University of Southampton) is delighted to announce that it will be hosting an online study day – People, Place and the City – on Wednesday 26 May 2021. The study day will combine three exciting events: an academic conference, a round table discussion and the Reuter Lecture 2021. You are warmly invited to each of these events. Please note that each event has a separate registration link. Interested attendees should register for their events of choice by 21st May 2021 at 12 pm GMT.
Below are the descriptions for each event and their corresponding link to register. The complete programme for the day can be found here.
CONFERENCE: 9.30-15.45 (Wednesday 26 May)
People, Place and the City: This interdisciplinary conference, which will include nine papers delivered by postgraduate students, early-career and more established scholars, is dedicated to the urban world and, more particularly, to the forces and dynamics that shaped urban spaces, cultures and identities in pre-modern societies (c. 500- c. 1700).
ROUND TABLE: 16:15-17:35 (Wednesday 26 May)
“Our majestic city walls stand strong over 600 years on”: Southampton’s Past in the Present: Inspired by Southampton’s 2025 UK City of Culture Bid, this Round Table will invite four panellists to address questions regarding the importance of Southampton’s cultural heritage, its development or promotion, and its role in forging the identity or identities of twentieth-century Southampton.
Our four panellists are:
· Dr Cheryl Butler (former Head of Culture at Eastleigh Borough Council)
· Matt Garner (BA MCIfA, Freelance Archaeologist)
· Dr Maria Newbery (Curator of Maritime & Local History Collections at Southampton City Council’s museums)
· Dr Andy Russel (Archaeology Unit Manager at Southampton City Council)
The session will be chaired by Dr Rémy Ambühl, Director of the CMRC.
REUTER LECTURE 2021: 18:00-19:30 (Wednesday 26 May)
‘Making places: heritage, renewal and site-specific medievalism’.: Professor Catherine Clarke, Chair in the History of People, Place and Community at the Institute of Historical Research will deliver this year’s Reuter lecture, which will draw on research into medieval towns to open up wide-reaching questions about place-making, uses of heritage, and urban renewal today. Touching on a range of projects, including work on medieval Swansea, the St Thomas Way heritage route, creative partnerships at Alderley Edge, Cheshire, and a new AHRC research scoping study, ‘Towns and the Cultural Economies of Recovery’, the lecture will explore what happens when we bring inter-disciplinary research into dialogue with place. What kinds of stories can research into the medieval past help us to tell about our historic environments in the present? How can innovative and creative methodologies enlarge our understanding of the public realm? And what could it mean to do ‘site-specific medievalism’?
The Reuter lecture will be chaired by Professor Nicky Marsh, Associate Dean for Research and Enterprise of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Southampton.
Medieval Art Research 