Speakers

Tiffany Christensen

A Southern California native, Tiffany Christensen got her undergraduate degree in Secondary Education with an emphasis on history. Her Masters is from the University of St Andrews in Reformation Studies. Tiffany is currently working on her PhD in Public History at Arizona State University. Tiffany’s research interests include Early English Funerary Monuments in the contexts of memory, place and emotives. Tiffany works at the Archaeological Research Institute at the School for Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University where she manages a collection for the National Park Service. Tiffany’s public history focus is cemetery preservation and is exploring the intersections of archaeology and history.

Oliver Cox

Oliver Cox has just started his third (and hopefully final!) year of his history doctorate at the University of Oxford. His research explores how and why Alfred, king of the West Saxons, shifted from being of interest to a small number of scholars and churchmen to become a major cultural icon in eighteenth-century Britain and America. He spent the summer as a British Research Councils Visiting Fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, Washington DC.

Lucinda Dean

I am a final year PhD researcher at the University of Stirling looking at continuity and change in representations of authority through state ceremonial of the Scottish monarchy c. 1214 – c.1603 (project funded by AHRC Oct 2009 – Sept 2012). This is an inter-disciplinary study analysing royal ceremonies including coronations and inaugurations, funerals, royal entries of kings and consorts, weddings and baptisms. Prior to this, I undertook a BA Hons in History and Creative Writing (dissertation: Medici in Renaissance Florence) and MA by Research in History (Representations of Authority of Louis XIV and the inversion of those representations by his critics) at Kingston University. I have given papers at a number of conferences in the last couple of years, most recently the Royal Bodies Conference at Royal Holloway (April 2012), Kings and Queens Conference in Bath (April 2012), Society for Renaissance Festivals Research’s ‘Iconography of Power’ at Bergamo University (May 2012), and Leeds IMC (July 2012) – with papers from Bath and Bergamo invited for publications coming from these events. I am co-chairperson of Stirling’s History and Politics Postgraduate Society, and co-organised a successful two day conference in August (following up two workshops held June 2011 and Feb 2012) looking at Representations of Authority of Scotland and her nearest neighbours from which we are currently looking into publication prospects.

Gita Deneckere

Prof. dr. Gita Deneckere
Vakgroep Geschiedenis – History Department
Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35
B-9000 Gent Belgium
+32-9-3310280
http://www.socialhistory.ugent.be
http://www.ipg.ugent.be
http://www.ugentmemorie.be

Christoph De Spiegeleer

Christoph De Spiegeleer (1988) graduated from the History Department at the Free University of Brussels in 2010. His Master’s thesis explored liberal networks in Brussels in the 19th century, based on an intellectual biography of the Belgian writer/philosopher Charles Potvin. In 2010-2011, he obtained a second Master in the History of Political Culture and National Identities at the University of Leiden, for which he wrote a thesis on practices surrounding the death of socialists in Belgium and the Netherlands. Currently he’s working on a doctoral thesis under the auspices of the Flemisch Reseach Foundation (FWO) with the temporary title ‘Dying, mourning and commemorating among political elites in Belgium 1850-1940’. This project discusses the relationship between political culture/national identity/media/religiosity and the practices surrounding the death of leading Belgian political figures in in 1850-1940, including 10 royal figures.
http://vub.academia.edu/ChristophDeSpiegeleer

Clare Gittings

Clare Gittings read history at the University of East Anglia and at St Anne’s College, Oxford; her M. Litt. thesis was published as Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (Croom Helm, 1984). In 1989 she joined the National Portrait Gallery as Education Officer (now Learning Manager). As well as running the schools programme at the NPG, she has curated exhibitions on such subjects as ideas of beauty through the ages, women and gardens and women travellers.
She contributed catalogue essays to two exhibitions about death at Dulwich Picture Gallery, on the Digby family (1995) and on Sir John Soane (1995-6), as well as chapters in various edited volumes on death. With Peter Jupp she co-edited Death in England: an illustrated history (Manchester University Press, 1999). She is on the editorial board of the interdisciplinary journal Mortality. She taught on the ‘Death and Society’ MA at the University of Reading (1999-2002) and on the course of the same name at Bath (2006-2011). From 2010 she has been Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath.
She has a particular interest in visual sources for studying the history of death from the early modern period to the early nineteenth century. Her more recent book chapters and articles include a study of unusual eighteenth-century burials, comparisons between garden burial in the past and today (co-authored with Professor Tony Walter) and the representation of dying in artworks from classical times to the present time.
Clare Gittings,
National Portrait Gallery,
St Martin’s Place,
London WC2H 0HE
cgittings@npg.org.uk

Germán Gamero Igea

PhD student at the University of Valladolid. Germán Gamero is graduated in History (University of Valladolid – 2010) and MPhil in Historical Studies after finished the Master Program “Europe and the Atlantic World. Power, Culture and Society”. Nowadays he is PhD grant holder from the Spanish Ministry of Education, researching on his project about “Ferdinand the Catholic’s Court”. His first papers treated different aspects on Ferdinand’s Palatine Chapel such as ceremonial, religiosity and material culture. Other topics are the court organization and composition, the expression of royal power and the relations between kingdom and court.

Heidi Mehrkens

Heidi Mehrkens studied Modern History, Medieval History and Law at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Her doctoral thesis focused on war experience and legal status during the Franco-Prussian war 1870/71. As a research fellow in late modern history at the School of History, University of St Andrews, she is currently embarking on a cultural historical study comparing British, French, and German heirs to the thrones and their interactions with the sphere of constitutional politics (1815-1914).

Frank Lorenz Müller

Frank Lorenz Müller (flm3@st-andrews.ac.uk) is Professor in Modern History at the University of St Andrews. He is the author ofBritain and the German Question, Die Revolution von 1848/49, and Our Fritz. Emperor Frederick III and the Political Culture of Imperial Germany. He is currently leading a research project on the roles played by heirs to the throne across the constitutional monarchies of nineteenth-century Europe (http://heirstothethrone-project.net/).

Alexander Noonan

Email: alexander.noonan.1@bc.edu

Alexander Noonan is an advanced Ph.D. candidate in history at Boston College. His primary field of study is modern American history and his research interests focus on the intersections between domestic culture and foreign relations. His dissertation uses emotion as a critical framework to explore the relationship between assassination, American foreign relations, and national security in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Dan O’Brien

I am currently in the third year of a part time PhD at the University of Bristol. My doctoral thesis focuses upon change in the death rites of Provincial England during the Long Eighteenth Century. This is an immensely interesting subject which provides a fascinating insight into the origins of behaviours and practices which are still relevant today. Death, as a theme in history, has been an academic focus for me since I completed a special project on undertaking and burial in London during my first year of undergraduate studies. Studying on an interdisciplinary Masters course in Death Studies enabled me to consider the contribution which other disciplines could make to my understanding of death rites in history. This culminated in my masters dissertation, which explored the representation of the undertaking trade in the Eighteenth Century theatre. Since this research I have focused on various themes in death and the management of the dead in the Eighteenth Century; a period of significant change, remarkable innovation and macabre traditions.

Edward Owens

Edward Owens is a PhD History 2011/14, University of Manchester (AHRC full studentship award) and his working thesis title is ‘The Projection and Reception of the British Monarchy’s Popular Image, 1919-1969’. He is being supervised by Professor Frank Mort and Dr. Max Jones

 

His thesis examines the popular appeal of the British monarchy from 1919 to 1969. The appeal of monarchy is, in turn, composed of 3 parts:

 

How ordinary British people have made sense of monarchy and experienced the public image of the monarchy projected by the British media in the period 1918 to 1969.

The way the public image of monarchy has been communicated by a range of media and how new media in particular has affected the popular experience of monarchy.

The way the monarchy has sought to present an image of itself to the rest of British society.

 

In respect of these constituent elements this thesis advances historical work on twentieth-century reception studies, questioning the way the media has influenced how British people have understood their relationship with monarchy, and the place inhabited by the monarchy in everyday life. This thesis also interrogates the various roles of the British media in the twentieth century and how different organisations have differed in their aims and motivations in relation to presenting the popular image of monarchy. Finally, in studying the role of the Palace in conceiving the public image of monarchy, this thesis also offers original insight into the way the Crown has desired to present itself. Combined with the work on media and reception, this three-tiered approach traces the relationship between the Palace, media and British public and the many forces at work in the fashioning of the popular appeal of monarchy in the fifty-year period, 1919 to 1969.

 

 

Papers Delivered

‘T. E. Lawrence, “Modest Man of Mystery”: Desert Romance and Celebrity in the English Media’ – Social History Society Conference, University of Brighton, April 2012.

‘“The Supremely Modest Man of Mystery”: Interwar Celebrity, English Masculinity and the Popular Press’ Pursuit of T. E. Lawrence’ – Histfest, Lancaster University, May 2012.

‘“All the World Loves a Lover”: Royal Romance and the Enchantment of Constitutional Monarchy in Interwar Britain’ – European Constitutional Monarchies Conference, University of Copenhagen, August 2012.

‘“Marina hats” are selling well, and sitting pretty!’  Media, Marketing and the Royal Wedding of 1934’, Distribution and Retail Conference,University of Wolverhampton September 2012.

“The Supremely Modest Man of Mystery”: Interwar Celebrity, English Masculinity and the Popular Press’ Pursuit of T. E. Lawrence’, History, Genre, Narrative Conference, University of Sheffield, September 2012.

 

Ben Roberts

Ben Roberts is a PhD candidate at Teesside University. The title of his thesis is ‘Civic Ritual in Middlesbrough and Darlington in Comparative Perspective, c.1850-1950’ under the supervision of Dr. Neil Armstrong and Dr. Tony Nicholson. The project explores the municipal observance, commemoration and celebration of annual holidays such as Christmas and Easter, the observance/commemoration of national (particularly royal) occasions, celebrations of local history, official visits and openings of public buildings, and the role of urban elite in ritualised culture. This is all examined through a case study of Darlington and Middlesbrough, from 1850 through to c.1950.
The intention is to test whether a broader definition of civic ritual will help to increase its understanding. Additionally, most historians have tended to suggest that the popularity of civic ritual declined in the late 19th century. However research so far suggests that rather than declining, it merely evolved and it’s therefore our definition of ‘civic ritual’ and ceremony which requires revision.
Ben’s research interests include the socio-cultural evolution of communities, use of ritual, custom and pageantry, the social history of the monarchy and urban history. He passed his Masters with distinction in 2009 following completion of his dissertation Planning, Participation and Public Revelry: Coronation and Jubilee Celebrations in Teesside, 1887-1977. He has also previously worked as a researcher for the British Steel Archive Project.

Jitka Štollová

Jitka Štollová is a postgraduate student of English Studies and Journalism at Charles University in Prague. Her research interests include Renaissance drama, and the history of Russia under the reign of Nicholas II. She wrote dissertations on the rhetorical profile of Shakespearean villains, and the portrayal of Gregory Rasputin in Czech non-fiction literature, for both of which she received departmental and faculty awards. She was a visiting student at the English Department of Durham University in 2011/2012.

Jeffrey Tyssens

Jeffrey Tyssens obtained his History PhD at the “Vrije Universiteit Brussel” where he currently teaches contemporary political history. He is the chairman of the Interdisciplinary Research Group Freemasonry and is a member of the editorial board of the “Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism”. Since its inception in 2007, he is member of the academic committee of the International Conference on the History of Freemasonry (the last one was organized in Alexandria, USA, in May 2011). In 2009, Jeffrey Tyssens was Pieter Paul Rubens professor in the Dutch Studies department of the University of California at Berkeley. He has written extensively on the history of secular movements in Belgium and on the history of Freemasonry and fraternalism.

John West

Since April 2012 I have been based at the University of Exeter where I am an Associate Research Fellow on ‘The Stuart Successions Project’. This is a major AHRC-funded interdisciplinary project, running jointly between Exeter and Oxford, which is investigating writing produced at moments of royal succession in Britain between 1603 and 1702. The project will lead to the creation of an on-line database of succession literature and a variety of interpretative and editorial work. For more details, please visit our website and blog at: http://stuarts.exeter.ac.uk/.
Before coming to Exeter, I completed a BA in English Literature at the University of Warwick in 2004, an M St in English (1550-1780) at the University of Oxford in 2006, and a PhD back at Warwick in 2011. My doctoral work explored the tensions between religious and poetic “enthusiasm” in the works of the poet, dramatist and literary critic John Dryden. I am writing this thesis up as a monograph and have other on-going research interests in: literature and culture from the Renaissance to the early eighteenth century; the relationships between literature, religion and politics in England during the Civil Wars and Restoration; Milton; Marvell; Restoration theatre, especially the development of heroic drama; and early modern women’s writing.

Dr. Elena (Ellie) Woodacre

Elena is a specialist in medieval and Early Modern queenship and has been recently appointed as a Lecturer in Early Modern European History at the University of Winchester. Her doctoral research was based on the queens regnant of Navarre in the late medieval period, focusing particularly on issues of female succession, matrimonial diplomacy and the power sharing dynamic between the queens and their kings consort. In addition to presenting her research at several international conferences in recent years, Elena is the co-organizer of the ‘Kings & Queens’ conference series- the previous conference was held at Corsham Court in April 2012 in conjunction with Bath Spa University and the next in the series will be held 8-9 July 2013 at Winchester. She is the French and Spanish editor for the Female Biography Project, which has drawn together an international group of over a hundred scholars to annotate the works of Mary Hays with modern research. She is also the founder of the Royal Studies Network (www.royalstudiesnetwork.org), a resource which aims to bring together scholars who work on monarchal topics to enable them to collaborate and share information on their research.