Dr Zayneb Allak
I’m a writer and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing. With a focus on contemporary literature and psychoanalytic literary criticism, my research examines the poetics of writing and reading. I’m especially interested in the intersection between creative and critical writing and the possibilities for writing offered by cross-disciplinary approaches. I’m currently developing a creative/critical project that examines uncanny themes such as darkness and privacy, and ways in which to text ‘spiders’ into being.
Professor Alyson Brown
Professor who researches in modern British social and cultural history with particular interests in the history of women’s education, heritage and the history of crime and punishment. I have become increasingly enthusiastic about what can be achieved through multi-interest partnerships. History is such a rich and evocative arena that can teach us so much about ourselves – surely everyone must be interested in it!
Dan Copley
Archivist, Edge Hill University. My role involves preserving, cataloguing and providing access to Edge Hill’s archive and special collections. The majority of our collections relate to the institutional history of Edge Hill, from its opening in 1885 to the present day, but we also hold collections relating to the First and Second World Wars, local tragedies (such as the Hillsborough disaster), film, television and radio. I am very keen to enhance our current collections and bring in new archive collections that will extend the research possibilities of our service. The archive is a great resource for engaging with local communities and I am also enthusiastic about working with other institutions and organisations, promoting the research potential of the service and forming new partnerships.
Anna Franca
As Head of Collections and Archives, Anna leads a team dedicated to managing and developing the library collections and University Archive. She has been working in academic libraries since 2006 and attained her professional master’s qualification from UCL in 2009. Anna is particularly interested in the role that libraries and archives can play as active participants in scholarly research. Other interests include data driven approaches to collection development and evaluation, and the potential for libraries to help shape a sustainable transition towards a more open research landscape. Anna is active in a range of professional networks and groups including the USKG Education and events sub-committee and several publisher advisory boards.
Elena Ghiggino
Archive Volunteer, and history PhD candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant based in the History, Geography and Social Sciences department.
I have been volunteering at the Edge Hill University archives based at the Catalyst since January of this year. I have been involved in several projects including: assisting with catalogue descriptions of the Edge Hill College Magazines, and setting up a wall calendar of past events to inform the Edge Hill social media team of historic events intrinsic to the university’s past. I am interested in learning more about the collection that we care for, and I am excited to see how the school outreach project ‘Think Creative Archive!’ will take shape in the upcoming months.
Henry Holborn
I am a PhD candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of History, Geography and Social Science at edge Hill university. My research focuses on migration, and the role of the state towards minorities from 1918 to 1926 in provincial Lancashire. Other areas of research include the Aliens Restriction Acts, diasporas, and refugee history.
Christine Lewis
My lifelong interest in history led me first to a career as a secondary school history teacher and latterly to Edge Hill University in 2008. My particular interest in stories led me into studying life story, autoethnographic and narrative approaches to research, enabling me to realise the powerful connection between the personal and the cultural and to understanding how this may inform the processes of identity formation. Over the last 5 years I have co-ordinated the Narrative Research Network, an interdisciplinary group of researchers based in the Faculty of Education, this group provides encouragement and support for colleagues involved in narrative research. I currently lead the MA Education Programme at Edge Hill University.
Sarah Schofield
Lecturer of Creative Writing at Edge Hill University and specialises in the short story. Herstories have been published in many anthologies including Lemistry, Bio-Punk, Thought X, Beta Life, Spindles, Conradology andThe New Abject (all Comma Press), Best of British Short Stories 2020 (Salt), Spilling Ink Flash Fiction Anthology, and publications including Back and Beyond Arts Publication, The Morning Star, Synaesthesia Magazine, Lakeview International Journal, Woman’s Weekly and others. She has been shortlisted on the Bridport and the Guardian Travel Writing Competition and won the Orange New Voices Prize. Her debut short story collection Safely Gathered In published by Comma Press was released in November 2021.
Grace Marks
I am PhD student and Graduate Teaching Assistant. In the past four years I have completed an undergraduate degree in History, and a Master’s degree in Nineteenth Century Studies at Edge Hill University. However, it is only starting my PhD and Graduate Teaching Assistant role that I have had the opportunity to explore the Edge Hill Archives. I am already a member of Research Catalyst and a member of EHU Nineteen, Edge Hill’s nineteenth century research centre.
Dr Helen Davies
Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Center, Department of English, University of Colorado Springs, US.
My work is at the intersection of medieval studies, the digital humanities, and the history of cartography. I use multispectral imaging to recover lost, faded, damaged or otherwise illegible text. To this end, I like to work with the types of documents in archives that most people do not have an interest in exploring further. The more damaged a document is, the greater the fun in recovering the material. I am one of the initial testers for a new low-cost, super-portable, more accessible multispectral system developed by the Rochester Institute of Technology with funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities. Currently, I am exploring the types of documents (paper, parchment, etc.) and writing (iron gall ink, modern pencil, modern pen, etc.) that can be recovered using this technology. My book project focuses on the Vercelli Mappa Mundi, a damaged medieval world map of the Hereford Map type. I place this document in its political and pedagogical context, and use the recovered material to rethink the genre of the medieval world map. I work with a new collaborative team, Videntes, to think through the larger social and political context of Vercelli through the archival material. We are particularly interested in a set of scrolls that survive from the 13th Century which seem to be a group of classroom posters (of which the world map is a part). I am working to make archival work and the digital technologies associated with archives more accessible and more intuitive for the scholars, curators, librarians and students who work directly with the material.
Professor Helen Newall
Professor of Theatre Praxis researching how creative art practices can enhance commemoration and memory. As a professional playwright, I have scripted many community reminiscence plays, but I am currently particularly interested in vintage photography, and how we might make these come to life by using animation to reinvest in them a sense of the subject within the valuable object. To this end I have made several animated installations which have toured widely to museums and other venues.
Aimy Stevens
Aimy Stevens, the new Archives Apprentice at Edge Hill University is working towards the Level 7 Archivist and Records Manager apprenticeship. The apprenticeship offers a technical training route into the archives sector, instead of the traditional requirement of a Master’s degree. Over the course of 42 months, Aimy will gain the skills needed to become a qualified archivist. Aimy said:
“I’m especially interested in film archives, and Edge Hill has some very exciting collections related to film that I am looking forward to working with.”
Sophie Smith
As Project Archivist for the Terence Davies (Director, Screenwriter and author) and Hurricane Film collections, Sophie is in charge of cataloguing, preserving and making accessible two major film collections we recently acquired into the archives. The Hurricane Film archive is the archive of Hurricane Films, a production company based in Liverpool who worked on many independent films and worked with Terence Davies on some of the films in his later career. It is an excellent resource both in its own right and as a support to the Terence Davies archive, which is a wealth of materials regarding the Davies’ work and personal life.
Along with this, Sophie is at the centre of organising outreach and engagement events for the collections which are already garnering interest and attention due to the unseen nature of the materials and the respect held for Terence Davies as a filmmaker. Sophie said:
“The project has the capability to bring a very wide range of interest from staff and students as well as external organisations and members of the public due to its roots in popular culture and film.”