The network will run four workshops and two history harvests between October 2019 and October 2021. More details will appear here as things develop. The current planned events are as follows:
Summer (TBC) 2022 Workshop 4
Storytelling: Intangible Inheritances (Oxford Brookes)
Stories, beliefs and values are critical to the formation of the family. This workshop explores how families transmit such intangible inheritances across generations to illuminate how and when they evolve, establish what explains their resilience, and analyse why particular stories move from the personal to public domain in autobiographies, biographies, popular histories and heritage sites
October – November 2021: Seminar Series: ‘The Books That Bring US Together’
Family bibles, scrapbook albums, recipe-books, photograph albums, ‘family books’, and similar productions bring together families across time and place to ‘do’ the work of family life. Through the shared production of identity and material happenings, these joint endeavours provide space to explore boundaries, meanings and affections of family life. Of particular significance is the role inheritance plays, since objects and the stories and emotions associated with them are transmitted through families across time and space. This is a dynamic process in which the objects are themselves undergoing change through writings and re-writings, ephemera, and collage-like additions, to reveal individual contributions to the production of family and identity.
Ninety minute online events via Zoom – registration is required and the links are below:
Friday 15 October 2021 – Seminar One: writing gender and family life – register here
Thursday 21 October – Seminar Two: family archives: emotional and physical displacement – register here
Thursday 28 October 2021 – Seminar Three: family cookbooks and recipes: emotions and identities – register here
Thursday 4 November 2021 – Seminar Four: familial emotions across time: bibles, religious books and quilts – register here
Monday 8 November 2021 – Seminar Five: scrapbooks, snapshots and albums: changing emotional meanings – register here
A full programme for the seminar series can be found here.
For any queries with registration, please contact inheritingfamily@brookes.ac.uk.
26 May and 2 June 2021. Workshop(s) 2
Imagining the Family – two 2 hour online events via Zoom for which you can register here.
These workshops will focus on what, why, and when family members transmit representations of their families across generations, in both private and public domains. These workshops will be held on consecutive weeks, enabling workshop participants and the public to work together to explore the meaning of family photographs for individuals, families, academics, and professional organisations.
Programme for 26 May (5.30pm ACST / 9am BST / GMT + 1 hour): Now full – registration closed
Corrine Ball – ‘Family ties – telling the difficult stories of Adelaide’s Destitute Asylum’
Leanne Calvert – ‘Objects of affection? Imagining the family through material culture’
Katie Barclay – ‘Counting the family: account books and family identity
Laura King – ‘Picturing the dead? Families and photos in twentieth century Britain
Programme for 2 June (5.30pm ACST / 9am BST / GMT + 1 hour): Now full – registration closed
Dolly Mackinnon – ‘Blood relatives and forged tombstones: inheriting the 18th-century Meyler family in Bristol and Jamaica’
Jane McCabe – ‘Finding Kalimpong: curiosity, cognitive dissonance and collectively in a ‘Three-World’ family history’
Ashley Barnwell – ‘Family history, settler time and anachronism: looking at the photography of Thomas Dick’
Lukasz Krzyzwowski and Loretta Baldassar – ‘Imagining the family through transnational social networks’
14 October 2019. Workshop 1
Genealogies, Genetics and Family Histories (Oxford Brookes)
This workshop explored how people conceptualise the family as a lineage, focusing on popular engagement with genealogies, family histories, ancestry genetics, and the relationship between family histories and cultural heritage. A report of this event can be found here.
For any queries with registration, please contact inheritingfamily@brookes.ac.uk.