Technecast

Beth Williamson is a PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London working collaboratively with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). Her research explores how the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) tackled the problem of ‘orthography’ when recording and mapping place names in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing how geography and linguistics, and politics and diplomacy, shaped the way the world was brought to ‘order’. In this episode of our 'Narratives of Nation' series, Beth explores the circumstances leading up to the appointment of the Orthography Committee at the RGS and the actions the committee took to achieve a uniform system of orthography.--------------Image credit: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)---------------Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. It is produced by Edwin Gilson, Felix Clutson, Izzi Sykes, Morag Thomas and Olivia Aarons. Fancy turning your research into a podcast episode? We'd be happy to hear from you at technecaster@gmail.com.

Gareth Hughes is in the second year of his PhD in Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway. His thesis explores spatial transformations in contemporary French and multilingual poetry.In this episode of the ‘Narratives of Nation’ series, Gareth talks about the multilingual poems of Michèle Métail, the power of poetry to loosen the bind between nationality and language, and how entering into poetic spaces can help us to reimagine the world.--------------References:Gratton, Peter and Morin, Marie-Eve (eds.), Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking : Expositions of World, Ontology, Politics, and Sense (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012).Li, Xiaofan Amy, ‘A Post-Orientalist Turn: Pascal Quignard, Michèle Métail, and China’, The Western Reinvention of Chinese Literature, 1910–2010 (Leiden: Brill, 2022).Les Linguistes atterré(e)s, Le Français va très bien, merci (Paris : Gallimard, 2023).Métail, Michèle, Le Cours du Danube en 2888 kilomètres/vers… l’infini (Dijon : Les presses du réel, 2018). Les Horizons du sol : panorama (Marseille : CipM / Spectres familiers, 1999). Le Vol des oies sauvages (Saint-Benoit-du-Sault : Tarabuste, 2011). Nancy, Jean-Luc, The Creation of the World or Globalization, trans. François Raffoul and David Pettigrew (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007).Parish, Nina & Wagstaff, Emma, ‘Michèle Métail : traduire la contrainte’, Michèle Métail : la poésie en trois dimensions, ed. Anne-Christine Royère (Dijon : Les Presses du réel, 2019). --------------Image: “The Map of the Armillary Sphere” by Su Hui, from Michèle Métail’s Le vol des oies sauvages : poèmes chinois à lecture retournée (Tarabuste Éditions, 2011). Credit: Hopscotch Translation, accessed via https://hopscotchtranslation.com/2021/10/18/janet-lee-marcella-durand/ [24 August 2023]---------------Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. It is produced by Edwin Gilson, Felix Clutson, Isabel Sykes, Morag Thomas and Olivia Aarons. Fancy turning your research into a podcast episode? We’d be happy to hear from you at technecaster@gmail.com.

In the latest instalment of our ‘Narratives of Nation’ series, Rosie Knowles, a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway, tells Isabel about her research into the health geography concept of therapeutic landscapes. In this episode, Rosie shares how her family connections with the steelworks town of Port Talbot inspired her to locate her research here, where she explores therapeutic interactions and connections between this coastal, industrial landscape and its inhabitants.A multitextured landscape in itself, Rosie’s project features creative practices from storytelling to print-making, as well as ethnographic research methods such as walking interviews with members of a local men’s mental health charity. Through this work, she examines how ‘moments of stillness and calm’ can be sought and found in the ‘grey’ industrial settings that sit outside the conventional ‘green’ and ‘blue’ spaces we commonly associate with health and wellness.--------------Image: Rosie Knowles---------------Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. It is produced by Edwin Gilson, Felix Clutson, Isabel Sykes, Morag Thomas and Olivia Aarons. Fancy turning your research into a podcast episode? We’d be happy to hear from you at technecaster@gmail.com

In the first episode of our new theme, 'Narratives of Nation', Lili Toitot, PhD researcher at Brunel, tells Edwin about her work on the mixed national identity of the French region of Alsace. An Alsatian herself, Lili examines the documentation of the region's history through the lens of gender and war memorials. The question that emerges from this episode is: what can we learn from Alsace about nationhood and national identity?Image credit: Lili Toitot. War memorial, Strasbourg, Alsace.---------------Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. It is produced by Felix Clutson, Edwin Gilson, Izzi Sykes, Morag Thomas and Olivia Aarons. Fancy turning your research into a podcast episode? We'd be happy to hear from you at technecaster@gmail.com.

We interrupt our scheduled programming to bring you this special episode in light of recent events. Techne's summer congress this year was cancelled due to the on-going industrial action taking place at the University of Brighton. In this episode, the Technecast team explore why industrial action is taking place at Brighton, and the position of the arts and humanities more broadly in UK higher education. A huge thank you to Luke Beesley, a Brighton PGR who gave us a really informative interview for this episode.https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/brightonucusolidarityIf you would like to share your research with the Technecast community, or have any comments about today's episode, please get in contact at technecaster@gmail.com, or follow us on twitter at @technecast or on Instagram @technepodcast

Finishing up our theme of life writing, Olivia chats to Al Meggs about his work on reclaiming cabaret.Al trained in dance and went on to a long career through the 1980s and 1990s as performer in cabaret, theatre, T.V. and film, before taking on various guises ‘behind the scenes’. Roles that ranged from stage crew to stage manager to production manager and dresser to wardrobe assistant to costume supervisor.Now, a second year creative writing doctoral student at the University of Brighton. Al's creative practice thesis, 'Reclaiming cabaret. A queer haunted autoethnography of real, researched and imagined stories of cabaret past and present' is in two parts. The creative element 'Blond Angel' is an autoethnographic novel recalling the life of a young male dancer in a small touring cabaret dance company in Italy in the 1980s, acknowledging an undocumented period in dance history. It also stories people and places from the origins of the modern cabaret in fin-de-siècle Paris, bringing the past and present together in a magically real space, where real, researched and imagined lives meet, haunt and interact within Al's lived experience. The critical element focuses on evolving unconventional approaches to autoethnographic and academic writing that resists the traditional patriarchal discourse of academic narratives. The podcast gives a glimpse into Al's life in Italy and the commercial dance world of the 1980s, and how he found himself, later in life, transforming from dancer to writer. It also touches on how Al uses storytelling to create critical, reflective academic work as a method tochallenge the heteronormative patriarchal discourse of traditional academic narratives.You can learn more about Al's research here: https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/al-meggs. ---------------Image credit: Mike Hornsby for the 'present day' photo & Al Meggs for the 'past' photo, from 1985.---------------Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. It is produced by Edwin Gilson, Felix Clutson, Izzi Sykes, Morag Thomas and Olivia Aarons. Fancy turning your research into a podcast episode? We'd be happy to hear from you at technecaster@gmail.com.

Returning to our theme of life writing, Olivia chats to Gemma Turner about her research on early modern carers. Gemma discusses how the early modern gentlewoman Elizabeth Isham reconceptualised her difficult spiritual relationship with caring after writing her autobiographical Booke of Remembrance.Gemma works for the University of Southampton within Student Disability and Inclusion. She recently completed her MRes project entitled 'The Carer's View: A New Perspective on Chronic Illness and Disability within the Early Modern Family' at the University of York. The project examined the experiences of two women, Elizabeth Isham and Mary Rich. Her research has mainly focused upon the surprisingly uncomfortable way caring responsibilities interacted with both women's Christian faiths. ---------------Image credit: Leaf 1r of Elizabeth Isham’s Booke of Remembrance, digitised through PrincetonUniversity Library: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/gx41mm48v ---------------Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. It is produced by Edwin Gilson, Felix Clutson, Izzi Sykes, Morag Thomas and Olivia Aarons. Fancy turning your research into a podcast episode? We'd be happy to hear from you at technecaster@gmail.com.

Continuing our theme of senses, researcher and sound artist Samuel Hertz shares his work on the sound(s) of climate and environmental change. More specifically, Samuel examines the ways in which acoustic sound-capturing methods alter human perspectives on space and time. After his presentation, Samuel joins Edwin for a discussion about all things sound, exhibiting his work in the International Space Station and the Pacific Ocean, and his recent performance art piece in Dortmund, Germany, which features a doom metal rendition.You can learn more about Samuel's research and practice here: https://www.samhertzsound.com/***************************Episode transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZdSvyDRU3v58riC9obWsbrflyojZr3qI/view?usp=sharing ***************************Technecast is a podcast series showcasing research from across the arts and humanities. It is produced by Felix Clutson, Izzi Sykes, Morag Thomas, Olivia Aarons and Edwin Gilson. Fancy turning your research into a podcast episode? We'd be happy to hear from you at technecaster@gmail.com.

In our latest installment of our 'Senses' series, Isabel chats to Viveca Mellegård about her fascinating research into the practice of indigo dyeing in West Bengal.Viveca is a researcher and filmmaker and started her career making science and arts programmes at the BBC. She integrates film and photography as research methods with a particular interest in making the embodied aspects of craftsmanship visible.She’s doing a collaborative PhD with Royal Holloway and the Economic Botany Department at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Her research links Kew’s colonial era collections of Indigofera tinctoria from India to contemporary indigo production and dyeing in West Bengal. Her work aims to communicate the value of the knowledge and skills embedded in the craft of dyeing with natural indigo and to show how embodied practices can cultivate human-plant relationships.---Viveca is interesting in collecting feedback on the affective power of listening to the indigo dyeing process. If you would like to share anything about your experience of listening to Viveca's talk, perhaps something you felt in response, or a particular moment that chimed with you, please email us at technecaster@gmail.com.---Image: Viveca Mellegård---Episode transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/144GbprFj00aOLIaF2JdFgnvmCC6p0iKZ/view?usp=sharing ---Technecast is supported by techne DTPTechnecast team: Julien Clin, Felix Clutson, Edwin Gilson, Morag Thomas, Olivia Aarons, Isabel Sykes

In this episode, Morag chats to Rachel Holmes about her research to kick off our theme on senses. Rachel Holmes is a practicing artist and writer currently completing her doctorate project The Language of Birds at Kingston School of Art, supervised by Professor Scott Wilson. Influenced by the work of Georges Bataille, Silvia Federici, Eduardo Kohn and Dale Pendell, The Language of Birds is interested in developing a theory of luck or chance, through which the intelligence of the Other (as nature) expresses itself; historically through ritual practice. In this podcast she sets the context for her research by describing the worldview of "living myth" which was demonized during the medieval witch hunt, laying the foundations for transatlantic slavery, modern capitalism and our contemporary state of disenchantment.www.racheladelineholmes.comIG: @jaguar_birdCover art: "Hazel Grove", textile work by Rachel Holmes referring to a vision-fast undertaken in Donegal, Ireland. --- Episode transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jn5T_EdDVZWeBmNc-32GdBcU2TBmI0od/view?usp=sharing ---If you would be interested to share your research with us, please do get in touch at technecaster@gmail.com