The Centre for English Local History

Centre Alumni

Dr Delia Garrett

Dr. Delia Garratt did her first degree at the University of Leicester, in History, before proceeding to a PhD on aspects of nineteenth-century Methodism, supervised by Prof. Keith Snell. She has since worked at the Englesey Brook Chapel and Museum, Thinktank (the Science Museum in Birmingham), been Curator of the Smethwick Heritage Centre, and is now Collections Development Officer for the National Waterways Museum at Gloucester, a fascinating job that brings her into contact with many sorts of people, educational groups, and social-history artefacts.

 

Dr Kathy Burrell

Dr Kathy Burrell, Reader in Migration and Material Culture, Department of Historical and Social Studies, De Montfort University, Leicester

Kathy took up a History lectureship at De Montfort University in 2002 and teaches different modules on ethnic and immigration history and Polish history. Since being awarded her AHRB funded PhD in 2004on Polish, Italian and Greek-Cypriot Migration to Leicester, having completed the English Local History MA in 1999, Kathy has also continued to research different aspects of Polish migration to the UK since the 1950sand has consolidated her research and publication profile. Still using oral history as her main source work, her research has developed in different ways, becoming more contemporary in focus and more interdisciplinary. She is particularly interested in material culture, as related to migration, and in the embodied experiences of migration journeys and transnational gift exchanges. She has also edited the first book to investigate post-accession migration from Poland to the UK. Kathy maintains a keen interest in debates relating to immigration, historyand memory and is the jiscmail owner for the 'immigration-history-uk' mailing list. Although her research and publications may seem a long way from her days at Local History, she is indebted to Keith Snell for inspiring her to think about more anthropological approaches to historical research and for suggesting she find out more about the local Polish population, which ishow her research career started.

Key publications include

(2006) Moving Lives: Narratives of Nation and Migration among Europeans in Post-war Britain (Ashgate, Aldershot)

(2006) (ed. with Panikos Panayi) Histories and Memories: Migrants and their Histories in Britain (I.B. Tauris, London)

(2009) (ed.) Polish Migration to the UK in the 'New' European Union: After 2004 (Ashgate, Farnham)

She has also published articles in Mobilities, Journal of Material Culture, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Journal of Transport Geography, International Journal of Population Geography, Social Identities, Immigrants and Minorities and Urban History

 

Sylvia Pinches

Since receiving my doctorate in 2001, I have held a number of posts. At first I did research for the Compton Verney House Trust, producing a study of the social history of the house and estate.  I was Curator of 78 Derngate, Northampton from 2002-2005, from the beginning of its restoration until the second year of being open to the public. My role combined historical and business skills. I researched the history of this house, remodelled in 1916 by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, presenting the material through display panels, the guidebook and training the volunteer guides. I was also responsible for implementing the day to day running of the house. Then I was employed by the University of Gloucestershire for four years on ‘England’s Past for Everyone’, a project of the Victoria County History Trust, in Herefordshire. This involved engaging local people in research, writing a history of the market town of Ledbury. I am once again a freelance researcher and writer, combining work for the Victoria County History Trust in Herefordshire with being a lecturer for the WEA and other freelance work. I am very involved with the Family and Community History Research Society Almshouse project.

Ledbury: Parish and People Before the Reformation (Chichester: Phillimore, 2010)

Ledbury: A Market Town and its Tudor Heritage (Chichester: Phillimore, 2009)

‘ “The Place of My Nativity”: Pride, Prejudice and the Rhythm of Charitable Giving in Warwickshire, c. 1500-1900’, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers no. 47 (2007)

‘From Common Rights to Cold Charity: Enclosure, Poor Allotments and Popular Protest’, in P. Shapely and A. Borsay eds, Medicine, Charity and Mutual Aid: the Consumption of Health and Welfare in Britain, c 1550 – 1950 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 35-53

‘Customary Rights and Charities’, in J. Langford. and G. Jones, eds, Forests and Chases in England and Wales c. 1500 to c. 1850: Towards a Survey and Analysis (Oxford: St. John’s College, 2005), pp. 33-36

‘Women as Objects and Agents of Charity in Eighteenth-Century Birmingham’, in R. Sweet and P. Lane, eds, Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England ‘On the Town’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 65-85.