Dr Nicola Whyte
Senior Lecturer
Extension: 01326 253799
Telephone: 01326 253799
My research lies the interface of early modern social history and post medieval landscape studies and is concerned with two broad, yet interconnected strands of enquiry. The first is concerned with the material and spatial ramifications of the social, economic and cultural developments of the period c.1500-c.1750. I’m interested in contemporary perceptions and experiences of landscape and environmental change, and have carried out extensive archival work on customary law, land use rights, conflict over the management of resources, the extent and nature of enclosure, and contested meanings of improvement.
The second strand of my research focuses on the relationship between landscape, place, memory and identity, and draws upon the expanding body of archaeological scholarship concerned with ‘the uses of the past in the past’ and the ‘life- histories’ of material objects including everyday artefacts, monuments, natural features and entire landscapes. I am particularly interested in the workings of oral memory and knowledge systems reproduced and circulated within households and wider neighbourhood, and mediated through the meanings and experiences embedded in the material world. Of central concern is the development of a cross-disciplinary engagement that brings the fields of landscape studies and early modern social history closer together.
I teach modules on early modern social history and landscape history c.1500-1800.
I am Co-Director of the Centre for Environmental Arts and Humanities. Follow this link for further information including publications and events http://www.exeter.ac.uk/esi/research/ceah/
