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Experiencing the landscape: popular geographical imaginations in the English Midlands, 1450-1650

People Involved

Profile image of Professor Briony McDonagh

Professor Briony McDonagh B.McDonagh@hull.ac.uk
Interim Director of the Energy and Environment Institute & Professor of Environmental Humanities

Project Description

This project explores popular geographical imaginations, asking how ordinary people in medieval and early modern England thought about, experienced and themselves sought to shape the world around them. Drawing on recent work in cultural geography, archaeology and social history, the project adopts a conceptually and methodologically innovative approach to the rural landscape, using court papers stored at The National Archives to investigate both elite and non-elite experiences. It focuses on property and enclosure disputes in the English Midlands between 1450 and 1650, exploring what these tell us about ideas of space, boundedness and custom, the practices by which change might be resisted and the role local communities played in shaping the landscape we see today. Outputs include 3 articles, 2 conference papers, a report and 500 digital tags. In delivering these, the project will develop and inflect cultural geographers' work on the experiential dimensions of landscape, as well as explore what a specifically geographical approach can add to recent research by historians and others.

Type of Project Project
Status Project Complete
Funder(s) British Academy
Value £9,968.00
Project Dates Sep 1, 2014 - Aug 31, 2017

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