Isabelle Kemp and Joanna Smith are a team of PhD researchers, currently completing a work placement on the ‘Histories of Childhood’ for the National Trust and TORCH. They are supported by Lucy Armstrong Blair and Dawn Hoskin (National Trust), Alice Purkiss (TORCH), and Sian Pooley (University of Oxford).
As PhD researchers, it was a pleasure to attend the recent ‘Children & Heritage’ colloquium, organised by the Centre for the History of Childhood and the National Trust Partnership at the University of Oxford.
The ‘Children & Heritage’ colloquium brought together academics and heritage professionals from a range of disciplines and organisations. Discussions explored both how heritage organisations can engage with the history of childhood, and how young people can engage with heritage.
On Thursday, Professor Susan A. Miller of Rutgers University gave an inspiring keynote speech on the role of young people at Philadelphia’s 1926 sesquicentennial pageant. On Friday, Caro Howell from the Foundling Museum spoke passionately on the current work that the Foundling Museum is doing to centre the histories of children in events and exhibition programming.
By bringing together speakers from different fields, the symposium acted as a stimulating forum for discussing the relationship between children and heritage and demonstrated the necessity of supporting further research within this discipline.
As part of our current research for the National Trust, we are seeking to identify the holdings within the National Trust’s collections that relate to the history of childhood. Using this information, we will create a report to highlight potential future areas for research and engagement.
If you’re interested in speaking to us more about our project, please feel free to email us at isabelle.kemp.2021@live.rhul.ac.uk or joanna.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
You can watch the symposium here
Isabelle Kemp is a PhD student based in the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on representations of single motherhood in British cinema from 1945 to 1970.
Joanna Smith is a DPhil student in History at Lincoln College, Oxford. Her research is on King Charles II of England’s representation in colonial territories, and she intends to answer fundamental questions on the nature of the Restoration monarchy, Charles II’s representation and early English colonialism.
Find out more about the National Trust Partnership here.
Find out more about the Centre for the History of Childhood .
Find out more about the TORCH Heritage Programme here.
