Prof Teresa Murjas: Animating archival histories
Component parts of this output:
Murjas, T. (2014) The First World War in Biscuits.
The home page of The War Child Archive.
A journal article: Murjas, T. (2020) ‘The Biscuit Town’: digital practice, spatiality and discoverability in Reading’s heritage sector.
Research process, insights and dissemination
The output comprises three synergistic components, forming one discrete project. It was created under the auspices of Reading Connections: Reading at War, an ACE-funded collaboration between the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) and Reading Museum.
The project components are:
1. An exhibition, The First World War in Biscuits (2014), shown in Reading Museum and The Minories, Colchester;
2. A web-resource, War Child: Meditating on an Archive (2016);
3. An article, ‘The Biscuit Town’: Digital Practice, Spatiality and Discoverability in Reading’s Heritage Sector, published in Body, Space & Technology (2020).
Item 3 documents and reflects on Items 1 and 2, which use Reading-based archives as sites for praxis; the Huntley & Palmers Collection and the Evacuee Archive.
Drawing on these contexts and resources, the project develops critical and practical methodologies for both generating and curating ‘histories from below’. In their AHRC Connected Communities document, referring to the heritage sector, Myles and Grosvenor suggest that ‘histories from below are facilitated when archivists, curators and researchers see archiving […] as […] a shared […] participatory process [involving] broadening definitions of sources and evidence’ […] (2018: 29) They note that ‘central to many attempts to build collaborative research practices is a turn towards […] arts methodologies in order to engage with different forms of knowledge’. (2018: 6) This project exemplifies that turn. Motivated by the heritage sector priority of discoverability, each output component explores how archival traces can come into meaning through cross-sector creative praxis; each one addresses research problems of remediating archival objects and documents for different audiences. All three project items are as much meditations on the challenges and opportunities of animating the archive as they are examples of doing so. Thus, they seek to extend cross-disciplinary, cross-sector debates and practices that address how individual and community memory can be articulated.
Links to the outputs
Murjas, T. (2014) The First World War in Biscuits.
Home page of The War Child Archive. Created November 2016.
Murjas, T. (2020) ‘The Biscuit Town’: digital practice, spatiality and discoverability in Reading’s heritage sector. Body, Space & Technology, 19:1, pp. 153-173.
Contextual information
Exhibition: The First World War in Biscuits
The First World War in Biscuits, Reading at War exhibition, John Madejski Gallery, Reading Museum, 5 April – 16 September 2014.
The First World War in Biscuits, The Minories gallery, Colchester, 16 May – 15 July 2015 (supported by Reading Museum, the Museum of English Rural Life, the AHRC-funded Everyday Lives in War Research Engagement Centre and the University of Essex)
The First World War in Biscuits, Whiteknights Studio Trail, the Icehouse, Wessex Hall, Reading, 13/14 June 2015.
Presentations disseminating the research
The First World War in Biscuits with War Child: Meditating on an Archive
Murjas, T. ‘The Matter of War’ (a three-paper University of Reading panel, including project contributors: Dr James Rattee and PhD student Sonya Chenery), Performing the Archive international conference, NUI Galway, 23 July 2015. Panel chaired by Ann Folino-White (Michigan State University).
The next three presentations had the same title, and focused on the same two projects, but the content of each presentation was different. Kate Arnold-Forster is the Head of Special Collections, University of Reading:
Murjas, T. and Arnold-Forster, K. ‘War Child: A practice-led model for collaborative collections-based research’, Research Libraries UK conference, British Library, 16 March 2018. Panel focusing on collaborative cross-sector research, chaired by Simon Chaplin, (Wellcome Trust).
Murjas T. and Arnold-Forster, K. ‘War Child: A practice-led model for collaborative collections-based research’, XIX Universeum Network Meeting Working Together: Partnerships, Co-creation, Co-curation, Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, 14 June 2018. Presentation opening Session 2A: Co-curating Academic Collections Within and Beyond the Campus.
Murjas, T. ‘War Child: A practice-led model for collaborative collections-based research’, Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities conference, Birmingham, 21 November 2018. RLUK-formed panel focusing on impact, chaired by Simon Chaplin (Wellcome Trust).
Murjas, T. Case Study presentation, OKRE (Opening Knowledge Across Research and Entertainment): GLAM Workshop (Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums), 31 January 2020, Wellcome Trust, London. Workshop chaired by Sue Crossley (Wellcome Trust).
The First World War in Biscuits
Murjas, T. ‘The First World War in Biscuits’, AHRC-funded First World War Engagement Centre Everyday Lives in War Opening Event, University of Hertfordshire, 4 June 2014.
Everyday Lives in War: First World War Engagement Centre, ‘The First World War in Biscuits’, 12 May 2015
Dr Rachel Duffett, ‘The First World War in Biscuits’, Open University, 10 June 2015
University of Reading Research Communications, ‘Whetting the appetite for edible archives’, 23 October 2017
Heritage & Creativity Institute for Collections, University of Reading, ‘The First World War in Biscuits and Advising the BBC’, 17 November 2017
War Child: Meditating on an Archive
Murjas, T. ‘War Child: A Pop-up Exhibition, Film, Show and Q&A Inspired by the Evacuee Archive’, AHRC-funded Being Human Festival, Museum of English Rural Life, Reading, 25 November 2017.
War Child: Meditating on an Archive was presented online by Research Libraries UK (RLUK) as an example of promoting the research potential of UK archives. Created October 2019.
Created: 01/03/21
Last revision: 19/03/21