Student profiles
Josephine Sweeney
Thesis Title
NWCDTP Team Project
Waterborne: The heritage, culture and environment of UK reservoirs
Institution
Supervisors
Professor Luca Csepely-Knorr (University of Liverpool)
Guy Baxter (Museum of English Rural Life)
Professor Richard Brook (University of Lancaster)
Research Summary
Reservoir landscapes embody complex negotiations between political, social and ecological conditions, engineering economies and architectural approaches. My research investigates these negotiations and asks how the landscape of post-war reservoirs is produced and perceived, considering the role of the landscape architect and other actors involved. Three key lines of enquiry underpin my exploration of production and perceptions:
- How do notions of ‘rural’ manifest in the landscape of post-war reservoirs?
- How did the changing socio-political context of the British Welfare State shape the planning and production of post-war reservoirs
- And how are divergent local, regional and national identity and interests interwoven with the landscape of post-war reservoirs?
This is a Collaborative Doctoral Award in partnership with the Special Collections and Archives at the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL). Drawing on collections and archives held at MERL, including those of the Landscape Institute, the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) and the Campaign for National Parks (CNP), I will situate and deepen understanding of post-war infrastructural and environmental planning. Using archival, ethnographic and creative research methods I will examine the ongoing impact of the landscape of post-war reservoirs on contemporary understandings of landscape and community use today.
Research Interests
- Production and perceptions of landscape
- Industrial and infrastructural heritage landscapes
- The politics of watery spaces
- Infrastructure and non-human actors
- Phenomenology of landscape
- Sacrificial landscapes (of extraction, contamination and destruction) and how they might be understood within a heritage framework
- Land access
Publications
Coming soon