Multi-method Approaches to Historical Research: Some Reflections on Practice, Skill and Tradition

Online only on Teams.

Historians are jackdaws. While the historian’s craft conventionally focused on archival documents, these days we tend to be much more promiscuous in the ways in which we gather ‘data’ and the methodologies and theories we deploy to understand that data. My research biography is indicative of this trend. This paper (taking the form of a ‘show and tell’) will focus on projects (in Shetland and in relation to knitted textiles) in which the use of personal testimony and practice-based research have enhanced my own understanding of the past, offering deeper, new or unexpected insights which have sometimes upended a narrative or provided a new way into thinking about a research problematic. The combination of historical data and contemporary reflection drawing on volunteer practitioners has produced rewards in terms of thinking about continuity and change, the salience of place and the centrality of gender.

Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Michaelmas Term 2026

Fridays, 12pm-1.30pm (Weeks 1-8)

In person at the Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre (entry via Robinson Close) except for Week 5, which will be online only.

Convened by Professor Elizabeth Hallam and Dr Charlotte Linton.