Within the Walls Group Activity Report (April 2014-June 2014)

For those who don’t yet know us; we are a funded PhD project in collaboration between the University of York—specifically the Archaeology and History Departments—and the City of York Council. The WTW team are still studying their individual projects, working part-time and blogging about their ideas too. We also have had some excellent news; we have been awarded funding to take part in the Being Human Festival—the first ever national celebration of humanities—and are going to be planning the specifics of event before it gets underway in November. We have also conversed with Sarah Tester from Gateway to History about potential ideas/workshops that we’d like to organise with people on the issue of the management of heritage and history in York.

Here’s some of the wider ‘goings-on’ at the History and Archaeology Departments. So Archaeology first; while the usual term-time talks have ended, we’ve had a brilliant set of lectures organised around the subject of Vikings titled “Travelling the Viking World” including various international guest speakers. The first-year undergraduates have been out on their first excavations—in the sun and the rain, and the Cultural Heritage MA student group ‘HYP’ managed to fundraise over £850 for their postcard exhibition ‘Your Place’.

Meanwhile at the History Department; Dr Mark Roodhouse’s first book was shortlisted for Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize; 3 Institute of the Public Understanding of the Past (IPUP) Interns were involved in historical research for the BBC 2 series “Ian Hislop’s Olden Days”; and this week Prof. Bill Sherman—visiting from the V&A—gave his lecture on the intriguing relationship between the architecture of the famous museum and the famous bard, William Shakespeare—it was a real show-stopper! That’s all from us for now, we look forward to welcoming you to Kings Manor in September for the next TYPlus meeting!