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Photo of Professor Elena Isayev

Professor Elena Isayev

Professor of Ancient History and Place

4200

01392 724200

For latest Research, Publications and CV :  https://exeter.academia.edu/ElenaIsayev/CurriculumVitae

Addressing questions of migration, belonging, displacement, encounter, politics of exception and constructions of place - with its related theme of memory-making and heritage - my historical and archaeological research forms a starting point for a longue durée perspective on current concerns. Investigations, using the ancient Mediterranean, range from histories of pre-Roman Italy through material remains (Lucania 2007); to deconstructing theories of generation conflict and youth (in Historia 2007); confronting conceptual issues of mobility (Migration Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy, Cambridge, 2017); highlighting forms of displaced agency (Between Hospitality and Asylum, International Review of the Red Cross 2017). My ongoing research projects expose intersections and mobility as essential for knowledge creation, bring in multiple voices and read archives against the grain, through the following collaborations: Knowledge in Transit (funded by British Academy/Leverhulme)with Staffan Müller-Wille (Cambridge); and with an international team Imagining Futures through Un/Archived Pasts (funded by an AHRC GCRF (UKRI) grant).

My current research is based on 4 intersecting strands:

1) Community as Intersection of Mobilities: a method using movement, not site, as starting point of analysis.

2) Hospitality, Asylum, Migration: tracing what compels attitudes to outsiders, refugees and role of hospitality as societal measure.

3) Potency of Displaced Agency: exposes forms and potential for/of action operating beyond the state.

4) Common and Public Space: questions publicness, highlighting alternative common spaces, place-making and heritage.

Alongside my deep rooted interest in ancient contexts, which includes such subjects as:

•  Countercartographies in a world without maps  •  Republican re-conceptions of Rome as Capital and Home in Polybius, Livy and Cicero  •  the value of citizenship  •  Greek Tragedy and the position of the outsider  •  Latin Comedy and Poetry on mobilities of the everyday  •  ‘Oscan’ forms of governance, the public sphere and ‘contra-urban’ settlement in pre-Roman Italy  •  Inter-state relations, sovereignty and the uses of diplomacy, myth and rights claims  •  the authority of the UN and the gods  •  Journeys and encounter as methods of knowledge creation whether those of Odysseus, the Argonauts, Priscus, or Linnaeus in Lapland …

I find inspiring and essential interdisciplinary and inter-practice approaches, that incorporate collaborative research beyond the academy, e.g. Routes - Migration Hub, Exeter; the co-created www.viewalmaisha.org which explores also practices beyond the stateand the Displacement and the Humanities volume.

My teaching reflects these interests, integrating diverse sources, models and incorporating practitioners in creating an understanding of the past (and present): e.g. the course Ancient Journeys and Migrants (CLA3268)I cherish and welcome working with researchers (in the widest sense) and supervising PhD students whose work incorporates these diverse fields alongside more specific historical and archaeological subjects.

Addressing preconceived ideas about ancient society that also affect understandings of today's world, are explorations under the umbrella term Future Memory (funded by AHRC Beyond Text et al., click here). These have led to co-creation with artists, musicians, museums, galleries and diverse communities in Exeter, Swansea, and Glasgow (see External/Public Engagement section).

Initiatives with Campus in Camps have allowed for continuing investigations in contexts beyond the Nation State and led to co-publication with practitioners and students: XENIA and INHABITING

 

Research interests

** PLEASE SEE For latest Research, Publications and CV:  https://exeter.academia.edu/ElenaIsayev/CurriculumVitae

My current research is based on 4 intersecting strands, described in more detail below:

1) Community as Intersection of Mobilities: a method using movement, not site, as starting point of analysis.

2) Hospitality, Asylum, Migration: tracing what compels attitudes to outsiders, refugees and role of hospitality as societal measure.

3) Potency of Displaced Agency: exposes forms and potential for/of action operating beyond the state.

4) Common and Public Space: questions publicness, highlighting alternative common spaces, place-making and heritage.

The in-depth analysis of ancient contexts, reading archives against the grain, provides a longue durée perspective for current issues, which I also address by collaborating with partners in refugee camps, memory and art institutions, e.g. (in detail below): • work with Campus in Camps & Decolonising Architecture; • article for Red Cross; • during Australian HRC Fellowship; • volume Displacement & Humanities; • ROUTES: Migration Hub; • article in LEAP - Custodianship; • workshop View from Edges of the Earth, OCA, Svalbard; • Laplandic Journey Knowledges in Transit;   • www.viewalmaisha.org; • Imagining Futures through Un/Archived Pasts.                                                                                                                                                                          

PUBLICATIONS  ** SEE LINK At Top for LATEST Publications **

Books: published and in press

Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy. Cambridge University Press, (2017) pp. 520.

This monograph investigates the nature of human mobility in and through Italy in the last 500 years BC, attitudes to the outsider and, in light of the high levels of population movement, analyses the 'constructed' nature of place and how the mechanism of its construction affects community membership and identity.

            Review: e.g. BMCR 2018.07.39, by G. Zuchtriegel (http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2018/2018-07-39.html)                                                                                                                                            

Displacement and the Humanities. (Guest editor, co-editing with Evan Jewell. Some already published, all for 2020) Special Issue of Humanities  6/7/8: a peer reviewed, international, open access journal, print and online.

            (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/Manifestos_Ancient_Present)                      

Inside Ancient Lucania: Dialogues in History and Archaeology (2007). London: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement, pp. 283. 

Ancient Italy: Regions Without Boundaries, with Bradley, G. and Riva, C. (eds.) (2007). Exeter: University of Exeter Press, pp. 334.

 

In preparation:

Body Out of Place. The analytical framework of this monograph, to be submitted to CUP, will draw on a number of ancient, modern and imaginary liminal settings, including ransom, exile, asylum, incarceration and the colonate. It analyses how people considered in diverse ways ‘out of place’ become a site of discourse about power and jurisdiction. It seeks to investigate the unique role of people in states of liminality for articulating inter- and intra-community relationships and the space between civil rights and human rights.

Who Needs Public Space? The Public and the Common Sphere in the Ancient World. Co-edited volume with Christopher Siwicki. In preparation for the series Studies in Roman Space and Urbanism (Routledge: London).

 

Forthcoming articles and chapters under review:

Studying What May Not Exist: Deconstructing Migration and Migrare as a Category. In A. Friedrichs and B. Severin-Barboutie (eds.) Representing Human Mobility in an Epochal Comparison. Special Issue of Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales (under review).

Ancient Wandering and Permanent Temporariness – the Turning Point. In E. Isayev and E. Jewell (eds.), Displacement and the Humanities. (Special Issue of Humanities 6/7/8) (under review).

Transient City – Steadfast Camp: Re/Construction of Ancient Rome and Present Dheisheh. In H. AlHarithy (ed.) Urban Recovery at the Intersection of Displacement and Reconstruction. Routledge, London (forthcoming).

Hosts and Higher Powers: Asylum as Discourse on Sovereignty and Responsibility. In C. Smith (ed.) Sovereignty in a Global Perspective. British Academy (forthcoming).

Ancient Intersections: Creating Place and Knowledge in Time and Space. In A. Russell and M. Lewis (eds.), The Spatial Turn in Roman Studies, (forthcoming).

An Oscan public sphere? with insights from Lucania. In T. Stek and J. Pelgrom (eds.), The State of the Samnites / Lo stato dei Sanniti. BABESCH Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology, Amsterdam (forthcoming).

Open dynamic custodianship: alternatives to understanding diversity and transformation. In V. Manolopoulou, J. Skinner and C. Tsouparopoulou (eds.), Identities in Antiquity. Routledge: London (in preparation).

with Paul Magee. The trick of Belonging (in preparation for GeoHumanities).

 

Chapters and Articles in Refereed Journals and Edited Volumes: published and in press

Elusive migrants of ancient Italy. In J. Clackson, K. McDonald and N. Zair (eds.), Migration, Mobility and Language Contact in the Ancient Mediterranean. Cambridge University Press. (in press for 2020).

The in/visiblity of Migration. In M. Daniels et al. (eds.) Homo Migrans: Modelling Mobility and Migration in Human History. IEMA, Buffalo (in press for 2020).

with Aref Hussaini and Paul Magee, “The Sky is Hidden”: On the Opening up of Language and National Borders, GeoHumanities (2019): 1-17.

The common, the public and the monumental in ancient Lucania – absent? In O. de Cazanove and A. Duplouy with V. Capozzoli (eds.). La Lucanie entre deux mers: archéologie et patrimoine: actes du Colloque international, Paris, 5-7 novembre 2015. (Naples : Centre Jean Bérard – 2 vol.) (2019), 673 – 684.

Making Ancient Mobility Visible. In Y. Justin Yoo, A. Zerbini and C. Barron (eds.), Migration and Migrant Identities in the Near East from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. London: Routledge (2019), 265-277.

Hospitality: A timeless measure of who we are? In M. Berg  and E. Fiddian Qasmiyeh (eds.) Hospitality and Hostility Towards Migrants: Global Perspectives. Special Inaugural Issue of Migration and Society: Advances in Research, 1 (2018): 7-21.

Tracing Material Endings of Displacement.  In J. Driessen (ed.), An Archaeology of Forced Migration. Crisis-Induced Mobility and the Collapse of the 13th c. BCE Eastern Mediterranean.  AEGIS. UCL, Louvain (2018), 83-94.

Between Hospitality and Asylum: a Historical Perspective on Agency. In International Review of the Red Cross, Migration and Displacement. Vol. 99, No. 904. (2017), 1-24.      

(https://www.icrc.org/en/international-review/article/between-hospitality-and-asylum-historical-perspective-displaced-agency)          

Emerging Diasporas? Oscan-speaking Mamertines, Romans and Italia. In Meller H. et al. (eds.), Migration and Integration from Prehistory to the Middle Ages. (9th Archaeological Conference of Central Germany, October 20-22, 2016).  Tagungen des Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle (Saale), Vol. 17. (2017), 183 -196.                                                                                            

Citizens among outsiders in Plautus’s Roman Cosmopolis. A moment of change. In L. Cecchet, A. Busetto, Citizens in the Graeco-Roman World. Aspects of Citizenship from the Archaic Period to 212 AD. Mnemosyne Series. Leiden: Brill, (2017), 135-155.                       

不断变化的监护关系 (Dynamic Custodianship). In Non-Aligned Movements. Issue of  LEAP: The International Art Magazine of Contemporary China 45: (2017) 118-25.                                                                                                                                 

Italy before the Romans. In A. Cooley (ed), Blackwell Companion to Roman Italy. Oxford (2016), 1-32                      

Human Mobility in Ancient Italy and aspects of globalisation before Empire. In M. Pitts & M. Versluys (eds), Globalisation & the Roman world. Cambridge (2014), 123-40.                                                                                                                       

The Lucanians: A history of the 4th century dynamism through archaeology. In Aberson M., Biella, M.C. and Di Fazio M. (eds.), Entre archéologie et histoire: dialogues sur divers peuples de l'Italie préromaine (Etudes Genevoises Sur L'antiquité). Bern – Berlin – New York – Oxford: Peter Lang (2014), 331-48.                                                             

Italian perspectives in the period of Gracchan land reforms and the Social War. In A. Gardner, E. Herring, and K. Lomas (eds), Creating Ethnicities and Identities in the Roman World. London (2013), 9 - 32.                             

Migration in the Ancient Mediterranean the last two millennia BC. In I. Ness (ed.) Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration. Oxford: Blackwell (2013), 1-5. DOI: 10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm357                                                                               

Just the right amount of priestly foreignness: Roman citizenship for the Greek priestess of Ceres. In F. Santangelo & J.H. Richardson (eds), Priests and State in the Roman World. Stuttgart: (2011), 373-390.                                                               

Corfinium and Rome: Changing place in the Social War. In M. Gleba & H.W. Horsnaes (eds),

Communicating Identity in Italic Iron Age Communities. Oxford (2011), 210-22.                                                                        

Italic sanctuaries in context: unpicking rural myths. Journal of Roman Archaeology 24, (2011), 533-40

Unintentionally being Lucanian: dynamics beyond hybridity. In S. Hales & T. Hodos (eds.), Material Culture & Social Identities in the Ancient World.  Cambridge (2010), 201-26.                                                                              

De-Placement: constructing and mapping place in collaboration with artists. Web Publication: The University of Exeter Digital Collections (2010-04-30). http://hdl.handle.net/10472/5340 (7400 words)           

Why Italy? In G. Bradley, E. Isayev and C. Riva (eds.) Ancient Italy: Regions Without Boundaries. Exeter: University of Exeter Press (2007), 1-20.

Unruly youth? The myth of generation conflict in Late Republican Rome. Historia 56 (2007) 1-13                                 

Archaeology ≠ Object as History ≠ Text. Debates in World Archaeology 38  (2006), 599-610.        

Ancient Umbria.  Historical Materialism 14.4 (2006), 279-88.                 

The role of indigenous centres in Lucania & their collapse in the 3rd c. BC. In E. Lo Cascio & A. Storchi Marino (eds), Modalità insediative e strutture agrarie nell’Italia meridionale in età romana (2001). Bari: Edipuglia, 107-28.      

Scavi di S. Martino, Romagnano Sesia (NO), seconda campagna di scavo (18.8.97 -7.9.97). Bollettino Storico per la Provincia di Novara (BSPN) 89 (1998), pp. 321-336.

Scavi di S. Martino, Romagnano Sesia (NO). BSPN 88 (1997), 649-61.     

Chiesa di S. Martino di Breclema, Romagnano Sesia (NO): Site Report for the excavation period 31 Aug. - 11 Sept. 1998. University of Exeter Digital Collections.(Created 2011) URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10036/3218

 

Migration, Mobility and Belonging

Challenging prevailing conceptions of a natural tie to the land and a demographically settled world, the monograph Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy (Cambridge 2017), investigates the nature of human mobility in and through Italy in the last 500 years BC, attitudes to the outsider and, in light of the high levels of population movement, analyses the 'constructed' nature of place and how the mechanism of its construction affects community membership and identity. In so doing it highlights moments of change in the concepts of mobility and the definitions of those on the move. By providing the long view from history, it exposes how fleeting are the conventions that take shape here and now. Issues addressed here have been developed in further publications and the new research strands below, which have emerged from my research into the history and material culture of ancient Italy: Inside Ancient Lucania: Dialogues in History and Archaeology (London 2007); with Bradley and Riva in Ancient Italy: Regions Without Boundaries (Exeter 2007). 

*  Research on mobility and belonging has been supported by Fellowships from the Davis Centre for Historical Studies, Princeton University, and the AHRC.

 

Beyond-Resilience: rights, exceptional politics & innovation out of displacement (proposal in preparation)

The aim is to bring together researchers and practitioners engaged with or in contexts of displacement who are invested in understanding, charting and enhancing the rights, agency and the potential of politics, beyond that enacted through nation states and territorial membership. There has been increasing awareness of the consequences resulting from the challenges of human rights, which, while promising equality irrespective of citizenship status, are still articulated within the framework of the Nation State. Nationality remains the basis of entitlement to rights, despite the guarantees offered for legal personhood to those deemed stateless by international human rights law. The situation has become critical, as the perceived state of exception of persons who are undocumented, who exist in refugee camps or detention centres, has not only engulfed whole life times, but become inter-generational. What will it take to shift the perception of displaced people from that of victims, threats, problems or emblematic figures, to that of potent agents (without denying their victimisation), who are equally invested in addressing shared global challenges? How can an opening be created for modes of engagement with the innovative, socio-political models that arise from conditions of displacement, without romanticising, in a way that is neither idealized or reactionary? It is the intention of this initiative to deliver tangible proposals to address these questions and the seemingly intransient, state-based understanding of rights and power, by conducting research through: history, practice, institutional frameworks, and theory.

 

Interdisciplinarity, Interpractice and Co-Creation

Fundamental to these investigations are the collaborations with researchers from multiple disciplines and practices, in and beyond the academy. These have involved co-creating with Campus in Campus in Palestine, and links with the Dandara Community in Brazil, resulting in collective processes, including: the publication with students of XENIA - Hospitality; and contributions to the volume, co-edited with Evan Jewell: Displacement and the Humanities. A recent initiative is underway: www.viewalmaisha.org. These partnerships stemmed from the initiative Future Memory, that brought together artists, muscians and wider community members (see Below and Public Engagement section). Such enterprises and collaborative research will be at the core of the propositional initiative, Beyond Resilience, described above.

* This research has been supported by grants from: the AHRC, Beyond Text Scheme; the Arts Council of Wales; Arts for All, Scotland; the University of Exeter, and others. See Public Engagement section.

 

 INTERDISCIPLINARY – COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Initiatives with practitioners and wider global community

 Imagining Futures http://imaginingfutures.exeter.ac.uk (since 2020).

Imagining Futures is a 4 year project led by an international team that seeks to contribute to Preventing Conflict, Building Sustainable Peace and Reducing Barriers to Capacity Sharing by co-creating tools for a collective understanding of Egalitarian Archival Practice and Heritage, with their associated Dissensus Methodologies, and to advocate for Culture to be Recognised as a Human Need. Funded by the AHRC Network Plus GCRF Scheme (UKRI).

Knowledges in Transit: Linnaeus's Laplandic Journey (1732) with Staffan Müller, Cambridge (PI) https://linnaeus-in-lapland.net/ (since 2018)

Knowledges in Transit is a project we are developing on Linnaeus’s Lapland expedition journal, which brings together heritage and journeys. It uses translation and travel as innovative tools for decolonizing the archive, and reading it against the grain to expose indigenous and women’s knowledges, among others, that he relied on. Our pilot, funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme, has allowed us to follow parts of his route in Finnland and Sweden, and to build a network of potential collaborators in the humanities, arts and heritage sector, especially with Sámi centres of research and cultural heritage organisations. Here we specifically explore the intersection of indigenous and ‘traditional’ knowledge systems and practices, in relation to memory, landscape, socio-political constructions of culture and nature, as well as land rights and social justice. Over this year we are working up a larger project and funding package with our partners to take forward this research.

 

        A series of workshops as proof of concept events were held in 2019 - 2020:

            In Finland – Arctic Centre Rovaniemi and University of Oulu.

            In Sweden – Vaartoe Centre for Sami Research, Umeå; University of Uppsala; Silvermuseum.

            Final workshop held at Havremagasinet Gallery, Boden, in Northern Sweden (Nov 2019).

            Linking with AlMadafah: practice and art initiative on Right to Host, Decolonising Architecture (DAAR).

 

Al Maieshah  www.viewalmaisha.org  (Since 2017)

A living learning environment conceived to understand the challenges in making the common –hospitality and politics beyond the state. Co-founder with Isshaq AlBarbary & Diego Segatto. Alongside our investigations in the field AlMaieshah has been invited to create initiatives for:

03.2019   Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany (https://www.bauhaus100.de/de/index.html)

                  Parliament of Schools: for the 100 year Anniversary  (https://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/en/centenary-2019/open-call-parliament-of-schools-2019.html)

11.2018   ArtEZ studium generale:, Arnhem, Netherlands (http://studiumgenerale.artez.nl/)

                  Home: workshops and publication

05.2018    BAK Institute basis voor actuele kunst, Netherlands (https://www.bakonline.org/)  and

                 La Colonie, Paris (http://www.lacolonie.paris/le-projet), in Propositions for Non Fascist Living

    Entanglement: workshops/exhibition (http://viewalmaisha.org/ghorfat/nederland-1-3/)    

02.2018    Office of Displaced Designers, Mytiline, Lesvos (www.odd.org),

                     Inhabiting: exhibition/publication (http://viewalmaisha.org/collective-dictionary-inhabiting/)

03.2017    Campus in Camps (http://www.campusincamps.ps) and University of Exeter, Classics

     XENIA – Hospitality: publication / workshops http://www.campusincamps.ps/projects/xenia/

 

Displacement, Hospitality and Politics Beyond the State (since 2015)

    Explorations and presentations co-created with artists, architects, activists, & other practitioners:

10.2018    Hospitality: part of Al-Madafeh: The Right to Host by DAAR (Decolonising Architecture)

                   with Staffan Müller-Wille (Exeter), at ArkDes Stockholm Sweden (www.arkdes.se/hospitality)

                    Knowledge in transit: the encounters that made Linnaeus’s Laplandic journey possible

09.2017     Future Maker/s Future Market/s, Lichtenberg, Berlin, with architect K. Rohde & UDK, Berlin

    Guest team member. Intersections of locals & newcomers (http://www.spacesofmigration.org)

11.2017     BAK Institute : BAK, basis voor actuele kunst (https://www.bakonline.org/)

                    Visiting Scholar/Participant - linked with residency for: viewalmaisha.org (2017/18)

11.2015     Campus in Camps, Dheisheh Refugee Camp, and at RIWAQ, Ramallah, Palestine

                    Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hillal of Decolonising Architecture (DAAR), Beit Zahour, Palestine

                    Heritage, Belonging and Place – ran a series of workshops

                    (http://www.campusincamps.ps/projects/place-heritage-and-belonging-livy-and-cicero/)

                       

Future Memory (since 2008)                         

2013-14 Future Memory in Red Road

Focusing on the Red Road Flats in Glasgow, this project drew on themes and methods of Future Memory. At its base are peoples’ lives, who lived in the flats across 4 decades; translating the hopes, aspirations and struggles of the shifting community, exposing place as an intersection of life trajectories. It consisted of music and art workshops, archaeological field surveys with schools, film and final performance that literally echoed a tribute and farewell through the flats’ skeletal framework prior to blow-down. Founded on research on emotional and physical attachments to, and understandings of, home through of place making and remembrance.

In collaboration with artists, Iseult Timmermans and Catrin Webster, musician/conductor Marion Wood, and from Unviersity of Glasgow, Rebecca Kay, Alison Phipps, Michael Given, and GRAMNet (Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network).

Funded by AHRC Translating Cultures Scheme, CEES, (Glasgow), University of Exeter, University of Glasgow, and Creative Scotland

      https://www.facebook.com/Future-Memory-In-Red-Road-567530939948200/

      http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_378620_en.pdf

      http://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/gramnet/research/futurememoryinredroad/#/welcome       

 

2011-13 Future Memory in Place

Based on my research into ancient mobility and the construction of place, the project investigates migration and the bond between memory and place. It engaged some 3000 participants in Swansea, including pupils from 9 schools, primary and secondary, through a series of workshops, exhibition and public events that resulted in art works and performances: Tessera Hospitalis Sculpture – permanently at the National Waterfront Museum Swansea; Art piece – 1000 Colours Blue; and a film of the same name with music direction by Marion Wood and Michael Ormiston. It also produced education packs and internships in the Museum that created visitor activities in relation to the sculpture and main project themes.

In Collaboration with artist Catrin Webster

Funded by AHRC Beyond Text Follow on Funding Scheme and Arts Council Wales (2011-12)

    https://web.archive.org/web/20170301002548/http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/deplacingfuturememory-fo/index.php

    https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/5386

 

2008-9            De-Placing Future Memory

This exploratory series of workshops in Exeter, which brought together an interdisciplinary group of academics, along with international artists, musicians and curators, some from conflict areas (Palestine and Iraq), became the catalyst for the other Future Memory projects. It experimented with the concept of de-placement to express the idea that, in particular situations, individuals and communities can be made placeless, along with the potential of creating new possibilities for future memory. It engaged over 600 participants, including a workshop with 200 school children, and combined artworks, music perfromances, a month-long exhibition at Exeter, and public presentations at the Exeter Café Scientifique and Phoenix Arts Centre.

With invited academics, artists & musicians. Funded by AHRC Beyond Text Scheme (2008-9)

  https://web.archive.org/web/20160923100307/http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/deplacingfuturememory/index.php

    https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/5258

 

QUICK LINKS

www.viewalmaisha.org

Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present:   http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/Manifestos_Ancient_Present

XENIA – Hospitality:  http://www.campusincamps.ps/projects/xenia/

Campus in Camps: Place, Heritage and Belonging – Livy and Cicero:    http://www.campusincamps.ps/projects/place-heritage-and-belonging-livy-and-cicero/

Future Memory:          https://web.archive.org/web/20160923100307/http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/deplacingfuturememory/index.php

                                    https://web.archive.org/web/20170301002548/http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/deplacingfuturememory-fo/index.php

                                    https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/5386

                                    https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/5258

                                    https://www.facebook.com/Future-Memory-In-Red-Road-567530939948200/

                                    http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_378620_en.pdf

                                    http://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/gramnet/research/futurememoryinredroad/#/welcome  

 

Research students

PhD:     First and joint supervisor (* 2nd Supervisor)

Topics: Ancient Italy, Roman History, Architecture, Archaeology, Heritage, Borders, Identity, Visual Literacy, Migration and Mobility, Mapping and Connectivity.

 

Rafael Scopacasa (Brazil)

Identity as social practise in the funerary sites of central Apennine Italy ('Samnium'), 6th-3rd c. BC. (2009)

 

Claude Kananack (USA)

Reconsidering “The Conspiracy of Catiline”: Participants, Concepts, and Terminology in Cicero & Sallust (2013)

 

Antonio Montesanti (Italy)

FINES bordering practices and natural features in Livy (2014)

 

Massimiliano Fusari (Italy)

Post-Produced Cultures: Meta-Images, Aesthetics and the Hawzas (2014)

 

Christopher Siwicki (UK)

Architectural restoration and the concept of built heritage in Imperial Rome (2015)

 

Katrina-Kay Alaimo (UK/Japan)*

An Archaeology of Temple Assemblages and Social Practice in Early South-Eastern Roman Britain (2016)

 

Maria Kneafsey (UK)*

The City Boundary in Late Antique Rome (2018)

 

Chiara Strazzula (Italy)

Etruscan Identity and Self-Representation in the Middle and Late Roman Republic (2019)

 

Luca Mazzini (Italy)

Triggered Identities and Imperial Power? Macedonian label re/use by civic communities in Roman Lydia and Phrygia (submitted 2020)

 

Laura Stops (US) *

Roman Gates of the Western Empire: The Cultural Conception and Physical Manifestation of the Urban Boundary (started 2018)

 

Katherine Fiona Carroll (UK)

Mobility and long-distance communication in the Hellenistic world: diffusion of ideas and culture across boundaries. (started 2019)

Fieldwork

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELD WORK – site campaigns with role as supervisor or director

Early field work as a student in South Italy led to the questions that resulted in my first book on ancient Lucania (2007). It also allowed me to be part of excavations in the region and to direct my own in Italy and beyond.

 

Of these the site of S. Martino (Italy) was a 3 season campaign focusing on pre-Christian remains of a Romanesque Church, which consisted of late Roman and scattered Bronze Age material. Unfortunately there was no evidence of earlier pagan worship, which local archaeologists hoped we would find. Since completion of the excavations I have continued to be part of local discourse on site preservation (Isayev 1997, 1998, 2011). 

 

The short field season at Llanon in Wales was to see if the Tudor site had remains of pre-Christian worship, but we found only domestic remains. (Report submitted to Ceredigion Museum, Aberystwyth).

 

The last excavation at Tegiszhol in Kazakhstan was co-directed with Alan Outram (University of Exeter) and funded by the British Academy. The field-school was part of investigations of early horse domestication and settlement in the Bronze Age of the region. Unlike most of the other projects in the area, which focused on monumental burial sites, we were keen to investigate much less prominent settlement remains through survey and excavation. Our findings from scattered settlements then formed part of Alan Outram’s ongoing work on horse domestication in the region, and our discourse on cultural practice, especially with Emma Usmanova. For results see: Outram, A. et al. (2009). ‘The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking’, Science 323: 1332-5.

 

Kazakstan         Tegiszhol, Karaganda             (2006)     Bronze Age Site                     Co-Director of excavations

Britain               Llanon, Ceredigion                 (2000)     Medieval - Tudor site           Director of excavations

Italy                   S. Martino, Rom. Sesia          (1996-8)  Multi-period site                  Director of excavations

Italy                   Potenza S. Giov. di Ruoti       (1994)     Roman villa                            Assistant Site Supervisor

Italy                   Cortona & Oppido Lucano    (1993)     Roman villa sites                   Assistant Site Supervisor

External impact and engagement

For latest Research and CV :  https://exeter.academia.edu/ElenaIsayev/CurriculumVitae

 

INTERDISCIPLINARY – COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Initiatives with practitioners and wider global community

 Imagining Futures http://imaginingfutures.exeter.ac.uk (since 2020).

Imagining Futures is a 4 year project led by an international team that seeks to contribute to Preventing Conflict, Building Sustainable Peace and Reducing Barriers to Capacity Sharing by co-creating tools for a collective understanding of Egalitarian Archival Practice and Heritage, with their associated Dissensus Methodologies, and to advocate for Culture to be Recognised as a Human Need. Funded by the AHRC Network Plus GCRF Scheme (UKRI).

 

Knowledges in Transit: Linnaeus's Laplandic Journey (1732) with Staffan Müller, Cambridge (PI) https://linnaeus-in-lapland.net/ (since 2018)

Knowledges in Transit is a project we are developing on Linnaeus’s Lapland expedition journal, which brings together heritage and journeys. It uses translation and travel as innovative tools for decolonizing the archive, and reading it against the grain to expose indigenous and women’s knowledges, among others, that he relied on. Our pilot, funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme, has allowed us to follow parts of his route in Finnland and Sweden, and to build a network of potential collaborators in the humanities, arts and heritage sector, especially with Sámi centres of research and cultural heritage organisations. Here we specifically explore the intersection of indigenous and ‘traditional’ knowledge systems and practices, in relation to memory, landscape, socio-political constructions of culture and nature, as well as land rights and social justice. Over this year we are working up a larger project and funding package with our partners to take forward this research.

 

        A series of workshops as proof of concept events were held in 2019 - 2020:

            In Finland – Arctic Centre Rovaniemi and University of Oulu.

            In Sweden – Vaartoe Centre for Sami Research, Umeå; University of Uppsala; Silvermuseum.

            Final workshop held at Havremagasinet Gallery, Boden, in Northern Sweden (Nov 2019).

            Linking with AlMadafah: practice and art initiative on Right to Host, Decolonising Architecture (DAAR).

 

• Al Maieshah  www.viewalmaisha.org  (Since 2017)

A living learning environment conceived to understand the challenges in making the common –hospitality and politics beyond the state. Co-founder with Isshaq AlBarbary & Diego Segatto. Alongside our investigations in the field AlMaieshah has been invited to create initiatives for:

03.2019   BauhausDessau, Germany (https://www.bauhaus100.de/de/index.html)

                  Parliament of Schools: for the 100 year Anniversary  (https://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/en/centenary-2019/open-call-parliament-of-schools-2019.html)

11.2018   ArtEZ studium generale:, Arnhem, Netherlands (http://studiumgenerale.artez.nl/)

                  Home: workshops and publication

05.2018    BAK Institute basis voor actuele kunstNetherlands (https://www.bakonline.org/)  and

                 La ColonieParis (http://www.lacolonie.paris/le-projet), in Propositions for Non Fascist Living

    Entanglement: workshops/exhibition (http://viewalmaisha.org/ghorfat/nederland-1-3/)    

02.2018    Office of Displaced Designers, Mytiline, Lesvos (www.odd.org),

                     Inhabiting: exhibition/publication (http://viewalmaisha.org/collective-dictionary-inhabiting/)

03.2017    Campus in Camps (http://www.campusincamps.ps) and University of Exeter, Classics

     XENIA – Hospitality: publication / workshops http://www.campusincamps.ps/projects/xenia/

 

• Displacement, Hospitality and Politics Beyond the State (since 2015)

    Explorations and presentations co-created with artists, architects, activists, & other practitioners:

10.2018    Hospitality: part of Al-Madafeh: The Right to Host by DAAR (Decolonising Architecture)

                   with Staffan Müller-Wille (Exeter), at ArkDes Stockholm Sweden (www.arkdes.se/hospitality)

                    Knowledge in transit: the encounters that made Linnaeus’s Laplandic journey possible

09.2017     Future Maker/s Future Market/s, Lichtenberg, Berlin, with architect K. Rohde & UDK, Berlin

    Guest team member. Intersections of locals & newcomers (http://www.spacesofmigration.org)

11.2017     BAK Institute : BAK, basis voor actuele kunst (https://www.bakonline.org/)

                    Visiting Scholar/Participant - linked with residency for: viewalmaisha.org (2017/18)

11.2015     Campus in Camps, Dheisheh Refugee Camp, and at RIWAQ, Ramallah, Palestine

                    Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hillal of Decolonising Architecture (DAAR), Beit Zahour, Palestine

                    Heritage, Belonging and Place – ran a series of workshops

                    (http://www.campusincamps.ps/projects/place-heritage-and-belonging-livy-and-cicero/)

                       

• Future Memory (since 2008)                         

2013-14 Future Memory in Red Road

Focusing on the Red Road Flats in Glasgow, this project drew on themes and methods of Future Memory. At its base are peoples’ lives, who lived in the flats across 4 decades; translating the hopes, aspirations and struggles of the shifting community, exposing place as an intersection of life trajectories. It consisted of music and art workshops, archaeological field surveys with schools, film and final performance that literally echoed a tribute and farewell through the flats’ skeletal framework prior to blow-down. Founded on research on emotional and physical attachments to, and understandings of, home through of place making and remembrance.

In collaboration with artists, Iseult Timmermans and Catrin Webster, musician/conductor Marion Wood, and from Unviersity of Glasgow, Rebecca Kay, Alison Phipps, Michael Given, and GRAMNet (Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network).

Funded by AHRC Translating Cultures Scheme, CEES, (Glasgow), University of Exeter, University of Glasgow, and Creative Scotland

      https://www.facebook.com/Future-Memory-In-Red-Road-567530939948200/

      http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_378620_en.pdf

      http://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/gramnet/research/futurememoryinredroad/#/welcome       

 

2011-13 Future Memory in Place

Based on my research into ancient mobility and the construction of place, the project investigates migration and the bond between memory and place. It engaged some 3000 participants in Swansea, including pupils from 9 schools, primary and secondary, through a series of workshops, exhibition and public events that resulted in art works and performances: Tessera Hospitalis Sculpture – permanently at the National Waterfront Museum Swansea; Art piece – 1000 Colours Blue; and a film of the same name with music direction by Marion Wood and Michael Ormiston. It also produced education packs and internships in the Museum that created visitor activities in relation to the sculpture and main project themes.

In Collaboration with artist Catrin Webster

Funded by AHRC Beyond Text Follow on Funding Scheme and Arts Council Wales (2011-12)

    http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/deplacingfuturememory-fo/index.php

    https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/5386

 

2008-9            De-Placing Future Memory

This exploratory series of workshops in Exeter, which brought together an interdisciplinary group of academics, along with international artists, musicians and curators, some from conflict areas (Palestine and Iraq), became the catalyst for the other Future Memory projects. It experimented with the concept of de-placement to express the idea that, in particular situations, individuals and communities can be made placeless, along with the potential of creating new possibilities for future memory. It engaged over 600 participants, including a workshop with 200 school children, and combined artworks, music perfromances, a month-long exhibition at Exeter, and public presentations at the Exeter Café Scientifique and Phoenix Arts Centre.

With invited academics, artists & musicians. Funded by AHRC Beyond Text Scheme (2008-9)

    http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/deplacingfuturememory/

    https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/5258

 

QUICK LINKS

www.viewalmaisha.org

Displacement and the HumanitiesManifestos from the Ancient to the Present:   http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/Manifestos_Ancient_Present

XENIA – Hospitality:  http://www.campusincamps.ps/projects/xenia/

Campus in Camps: Place, Heritage and Belonging – Livy and Cicero:    http://www.campusincamps.ps/projects/place-heritage-and-belonging-livy-and-cicero/

Future Memory:          https://web.archive.org/web/20160923100307/http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/deplacingfuturememory/index.php

https://web.archive.org/web/20170301002548/http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/deplacingfuturememory-fo/index.php                                    https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/5386

                                    https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/5258

                                    https://www.facebook.com/Future-Memory-In-Red-Road-567530939948200/

                                    http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_378620_en.pdf

                                    http://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/gramnet/research/futurememoryinredroad/#/welcome  

 

 

Biography

Education

Ph.D. History: University College London, University of London (July 2000)              

            Dissertation: Indigenous communities in Lucania: social organization & political forms, 4t-1st c. BC

M.A. Classical Archaeology (Distinction): University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (1995) 

B.A. Hon. History/Classical Studies, (First Class, magna cum laude): York University, Toronto (1993)

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