The University of Kent is again hosting this years’ South East Hub Conference, which will be on ‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Material Culture’, and is to be held on Thursday 9th June 2016.

This one-day conference hosted at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus brings together a range of research on material culture in Britain and the wider world. It will include a Special Collections workshop led by Dr. Emily Guerry, as well as a variety of panels led by postgraduate researchers, with broad themes covering: methodological practice, material and cultural exchange, symbolism, and myth and memory in materiality. Our keynote, Professor Nicholas Saunders, will be delivering a lecture in the afternoon..

The full programme can be viewed below, and has been selected to give consideration to the variable ways of approaching material studies across a range of disciplines.

The Conference is free to attend, and is open to all postgraduate and academic staff interested in, or studying issues within material culture. Lunch and refreshments are provided. Please register your attendance by emailing SEHub2016@gmail.com by Thursday 2nd June, including your name, institution and area of research.

Places are limited for Dr Guerry’s session in Special Collections and, therefore, will be allocated on a first come first served basis. However, those unable to attend the morning session are welcome to register to attend the rest of the conference.

Conference Programme

Time	Programme
9.30-10.30	Registration & Refreshments
10.30-12.00	Workshop with Dr Emily Guerry (University of Kent)
12.00-1.30	Panel 1 & 2
1.30-2.30	Lunch
2.30-4.00	Panel 3 & 4
4.00-4.30	Coffee break
4.30-6.00	Keynote Lecture by Professor Nicholas Saunders (Bristol University)

 

Panel One: Methodological practices in material studies

Name	Paper
Harriet Dorling	‘Neither flesh nor fleshless’ (Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot): Methodological considerations for the interdisciplinary use of material object studies and literature
Hannah Lilley	William Burch’s Artisanal Material Practice and the Making of his Master’s Manuscript
Rebecca Smith	Rubber stamps, chinagraph, captions and coffee stains: Exploring bureaucracy through materiality in the Daily Herald picture library

 

Panel Two: Symbolism and materiality

Name	Paper
Nicholas Blower	Comfort in the Ephemeral: Environmentalist Effigies and Communal Agency in Southern Utah
Amy Hammett	The Clay balls of Ancient Egypt: A Rite of Passage?
Holly Winter	Engraving Seringapatam War Trophies and the Construction of British Militaristic Masculinities in Colonial India, 1799-1857

 

Panel Three: Material and cultural exchange

Name	Paper
Colin Elder	“The staple of the place, are the white fish and maple sugar, and some few, but not many, furs.”: Movement and circulation of material objects in the nineteenth century, and their meanings and status in the Upper Great Lakes
Gumring Hkangda	Museum Objects and Indigenous Knowledge: methodological and epistemological perspectives in the case of researching the mainland Southeast Asia ethnographic materials at the British Museum
Rachael Morton	Perceptions of Quality Metalware in Eighteenth-Century England

 

Panel Four: Myth, memory and materiality

Name	Paper
Alina Kozlovski	Pillars of time: Fragmenting the past and present in the ancient Roman landscape
Bisma Khan	Architecture and Literature in the construction of memory, specifically, the Orient in in eighteenth century England
Melissa Bennett	‘Made of poor fighting material’: The photographic presentation of the martial qualities of the West India Regiment during the Sierra Leone Hut Tax War of 1898