New Additions to the PhD Cohort

The start of the new academic year brought some new additions to the Landscape Surgery cohort. Seven PhD students joined us in Septembe 2019, bringing a set of new projects that span the discipline(s). Some of these projects are practiced based, whilst others will deploy some unique creative methodologies. Together, they tackle an array of interesting and pressing issues, showing strong variety, and are sure to lead to great bodies of research.

So, introducing our new doctoral researchers..

Angela Chan

Angela is a doctoral researcher with StoryFutures, Royal Holloway’s new immersive and VR lab. Her research focuses on creative clustering, exploring the business models and behaviours that drive successful growth in the digital and immersive sectors. Her particular focus is on the role that diversity plays in innovation and new forms of digital storytelling. 

Bethan Lloyd Worthington

Bethan is an artist working with installation, objects, writing and artists books. Her practice-based research takes as a starting point the excavation of Gully Cave in Somerset and practices of climate reconstruction.

Stefano Carnelli

With a background in architecture, urbanism and sociology, Stefano’s work explores the intersection between photography and cultural geography. Stefano’s practice-based research investigates the ERUV, the ritual urban enclosure that allows Orthodox Jewish communities to circumvent some of the restrictions imposed on the public domain during Sabbath and other festivities.

Rachel Tyler

Rachel’s research explores geographies of garments and making, and how these can be expressed through cartography. Her AHRC Techne funded PhD employs creative practice-led methodology, with a specific focus on London’s fashion industry.

Holly Nielsen

Holly’s research, “British Board Games and the Ludic Imagination, c.1860-1960”, explores the history of play, materiality, intergenerational familial dynamics, and understanding categories of age through analysing the presence of board games both in domestic spaces and their wider cultural presence.

Jack Morton

Jack is a Doctoral Researcher with StoryFutures specialising in cultural and political geographies with his PhD research focusing on freelance labour in the video games industry. He has been at Royal Holloway in the Department of Geography for 4 years, completing a BSc in Geography and MSc in Geopolitics and Security.

Rhys Gazeres de Baradieux

Rhys’ PhD explores skateboarding’s debut inclusion into the 2020 Olympic Games, and the tensions that this has with skateboarding as it is practiced and lived in the urban environment, created ultimately by the further entrenchment of the neoliberal doctrine onto a subversive urban practice.

Written by Rhys / Edited by Rachel.

Commons, Greens, and the end of a decade

The last Landscape Surgery session of the decade was opened by Katrina Navickas’s (University of Hertfordshire) presentation : ‘Customary rights, property and contested belongings in English commons and village greens, 1765-1965’. The seminar was a collaboration with Provincialism at Large – a new seminar series co-ordinated by Ruth Livesey (RHUL),  building on the collaboration between the Centre for Victorian Studies and the Centre for the GeoHumanities. Katrina was joined by Ruth and two PhD researchers (RHUL) Saskia Papadakis and Gemma Holgate, whose doctoral research projects are titled  ‘Northerners in London: Englishness, place and mobility’ and ‘Writing Socialist Feminism: Women Activists and the Novel, 1887-1908,’ respectively.

Katrina positions herself firmly as a regionalist, and promotes the study of particular regions in English history.  Today, she is presenting her research on legal geographies of the commons and village greens in England.  The 1965 Commons Registration act was legislation which aimed to survey all common land in England and Wales, however it was flawed and revealed the widespread difficulties of defining a common, its rights and ownership — many of which still exist today. The resulting registers are inaccurate and conflicting. 

1965 Commons Registration Act

But, how is common land defined? We were challenged to define these three terms as a group– with varying degrees of success!

• Common: Private land which is subject to rights of common–  including pasture, turbary (taking peat or turf), estovers (taking wood), piscary (taking fish)..etc. The land could be fenced or open and was usually attached to private property.

• Waste: Land which belongs to the manor, is uncultivated and while is not subject to rights of common can be used for pasture. 

• Village Green: Land ‘owned’ by the village parish, which has been allotted for recreation and leisure for the inhabitants of the village.

A sign listing Coulsdon Common’s byelaws, and list of fees. From 1954 – still erected today it the common today. 

Katrina reminds us of the importance of commons, to working people particularly, throughout history as meeting places; their integrity to political movements; the commons preservation movement; and points to the new shift to ecological concerns. 

Today many are fighting for their commons to prevent housing developments and retaining commons as nature reserves. Katrina also points to the landmark case in November 2019 in the which the Supreme Court ruled the banning  of Extinction Rebellion’s Autumn protest between 14-19 October was unlawful, which reminds us of how important laws on customary rights can be in the present: the right to liberty and protest still need to be protected. 

We would like to thank Katrina Navicka for her engaging presentation, and imagery; Ruth Livesey and Sasha Engelmann for organising this session; Saskia Papadakis and Gemma Holgate for presenting their research; and the other Landscape Surgery participants for their contributions to the discussion.

Written by Rachel Tyler.