Events

Below is a summary of some past and up-coming activities and events:

August 2023:

I will be co-convening a session on The Agency of Value in Archaeological Heritage (session 185) at the European Association of Archaeologists annual meeting in Belfast. The call for papers is open from 19th December 2022 until 9th February 2023 (see EAA website for details).

December 2022:

I co-convened a session (chaired by Lorika Hisari) at the Association of Critical Heritage Studies 2022 conference, titled Methods for weaving social interactions in transformed urban historic landscapes. I was also co-author on a paper (delivered by Sian Jones) on ‘Diverse heritage futures for “deep cities”: a methods assemblage approach’.

April 2022:

I co-convened and chaired a five-paper session at the CIfA (Chartered Institute for Archaeologists) Annual Conference (online). The session was titled, MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: Understanding the social values of archaeology and heritage through people-centred methods.

Also in April, I co-authored  a paper with members of the University of Stirling Deep Cities team, titled ‘Urban placemaking and archaeology in ‘deep cities’: a methods assemblage approach’. The paper was presented as part of a six-paper session that I co-convened with Dr Torgrim Sneve Guttormsen on Archaeology and Urban Theory: What can archaeological thinking offer urban theory? at the Nordic Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference, Oslo, Norway.

October 2021:

An article introducing the Social Value Toolkit and featuring the Kinneil House and Estate case study will be included in the upcoming (20th anniversary) issue of History Scotland magazine.

July 2021:

I participated in the Council for British Archaeology’s Festival of Archaeology, sharing the project findings and introducing the toolkit for practitioners. The session ‘Whose Heritage Counts? Understanding and evidencing the social value of the historic environment’, was recorded and can be viewed here.

The methods and approaches trialled in the Wrestling with Social Value project are also being put into practice as part of a new research project, titled ‘Deep Cities‘. This international collaboration is examining how understandings of historical urban transformation and the associated heritage values can help inform city planning.

June 2021:

We will be launching the heritage practitioner guidance on assessing and working with the social values associated with the historic environment, which has been developed based on the Wrestling with Social Value project findings. For more details see Toolkit.

August 2020:

I delivered a paper at the Association of Critical Heritage Studies 5th Biennial Conference, which was held virtually, 26th-30th August 2020. My paper was part of a 12-paper session titled New Ways of Making Heritage Futures: Critical and Creative Approaches to People-Centred Methods, which I co-convened and co-chaired with Siân Jones and Tracy Ireland and Tessa Bell, from the University of Canberra. My individual paper focused on multi-method approaches to social value assessment and was pre-recorded with a live Q&A during the conference.

December 2019:

I spent a week on academic exchange at the University of Canberra, Australia, ahead of the Thirteenth International Conference of Young Researchers in Heritage 2019, being held at the Australia National University, also in Canberra. The conference theme was Concept(s) of Heritage and I presented a paper as part of the session on Values under the sub-theme Reconceptualisation of Public Policies.

September 2019:

I attended the 25th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Bern, Switzerland, to deliver a paper titled ‘A Mixed Bag: Developing a Methods ‘Toolkit’ for Assessing the Social Values of Heritage’ as part of session #73.

May 2019:

Symposium on Defining Significance and Social Value in Heritage Landscapes, Edinburgh: I participated in this invitation-only event and delivered a short presentation about my research as an input to the discussion.

Also in May, I joined Siân Jones, Judith Anderson and other colleagues from the University of Stirling and HES in a 2-day research exchange with NIKU, The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage. These events form part of the University of Stirling’s 2019 Festival of Research.

November 2018:

On Saturday 10th November, I attended Scotland’s Community Heritage Conference, Stirling, and hosted a half-hour discussion session on assessing social value.

Also this month, I made a joint submission with Siân Jones to the Built Environment Forum Scotland (BEFS) Consultation on Prioritisation within Built Heritage.

September 2018:

In early September, I joined other University of Stirling delegates in Hangzhou, China, for the the IV Biennial Association of Critical Heritage Studies Conference. Prior to attending, I contributed to a ‘provocation’, co-authored with Siân Jones, titled Multiple methods and diverse objects: challenges in the creation of a social value ‘toolkit’ for heritage management and conservation. The paper took as an immediate reference point my collaborative doctoral project and was delivered by Professor Jones as part of session 101: Toolkits Across Borders. I was able to join the panel for the subsequent discussion portion of the session to answer questions about the project.

June 2018:

For 12 days in June, I joined an international team of researchers and practitioners for a series of community meetings and site visits that stretched from Edinburgh in the South to Sanday Island, Orkney in the North. This research programme, called Learning From Loss, was looking at transformation of the historic environment in the face of climate change and asking questions about significance, prioritisation, and the processes of change and loss. As well as tweeting about the trip (#LearningfromLoss), I co wrote the following blog with University of Stirling Post-Doc Qian Gao, reflecting on our experiences:

Bringing social values into the prioritisation of heritage sites: a question of resilience?