Dr Laura Sangha

'And my desire and will is that my said Sister shall have the entire government of educating and bringing up and placing out of my said Nephew ... and that William Reynolds the Father of my said Nephew shall in no wise intermeddle or concern himself therewith'.

Mary Marner, London widow, 1725.

Artist Charmaine Watkiss - In Conversation - RAMM London-based artist Charmaine Watkiss and Exeter-based writer Fiona Williams will be in conversation to celebrate Watkiss’s new commission for RAMM. Expect to hear about medicinal plants from Jamaica ...

The artist will also be in conversation at RAMM on March 19: rammuseum.org.uk/whats-on/art...

‘It’s about hurling yourself into the unknown’: Charmaine Watkiss on turning a UK museum upside down The artist’s work resurfaces skills and knowledge that colonialism buried. She explains how her drawings and sculpture weave botanical illustration and traditional craft to engage with generational tr...

“I needed to respond to the West Africa display as the story of the diaspora was missing”'.

Looking forward to seeing Charmaine Watkiss's new works at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum soon.

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Sweet Taste of Empire book event poster

📣 Manchester (& nearby folks)! The brilliant @profkfh.bsky.social will be speaking about how her new book, The Sweet Taste of Empire, came to be in conversation with Dr. Fred Schurink at our next @uomenglish.bsky.social research seminar. Join us next THURSDAY, 12 Feb from 4-5 pm in Sam Alex SG.16.

Many thanks for the heads up! There's one on Cowick street that sounds similar ...

meanwhile in Devon:

'maybe we shouldn't go to this Totnes gig tonight with the rain warning and all'
'yeah, perhaps we could go to the pub tomorrow instead'
'ok, but there is a rain warning for then too'
'drive to the Mill on the Exe? it has a car park'
'has it opened after the flooding last week?'

Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis: how digital circulation boosts the impact of a protest song The singer’s song about the killings in Minneapolis translates private loss into a collective experience rapidly shared through social media.

'movement from the individual to the collective places Streets of Minneapolis within a wider lineage of protest song, creating narratives out of real events so they can be...acted upon. In this sense, the song does not simply respond to politics, but actively participates in political thought'.

With universities making a loss on teaching domestic graduates, and almost half of universities in England facing deficits this year, student loans need to be reviewed as part of a much broader, and urgent, rethink of how UK universities are funded.

The university funding crisis finally starting to make it into newspaper editorials
www.ft.com/content/82f5...

Making Metrics Matter: A more ambitious approach to tackling racial inequity in higher education - HEPI A new paper by Dr Katharine Hubbard, Making Metrics Matter: Tackling Racial Inequity in Higher Education (HEPI Debate Paper 43), argues progress towards racial equity in English higher education has b...

'The report by Katharine Hubbard...at Buckinghamshire New University, analyses results from the 2023 Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), a national scheme run by the Office for Students (OfS) that assesses the quality of teaching in English universities.' 2/2

TEF should ‘penalise universities for failing on racial equity’ Report flags how seven institutions that have achieved a coveted gold rating have black awarding gaps exceeding 25 percentage points

'Several universities in England which have scored a top rating in a national teaching assessment have large gaps in degree outcomes for black students and low representation of black academics, according to a report that says equity goals should form a larger part of quality metrics.' 1/2

I think it is drugget - OED: '1564–
A heavy cloth of wool, or of a mixture of wool and silk or wool and linen, used chiefly for clothing; a piece or length of this cloth.'

The Fats of Life in the Early Modern World, 1500-1750: Matter in Multispecies Medicine

Just a reminder ... tomorrow at 5.30 pm, Holly Fletcher (@drhollyfletcher.bsky.social) will be speaking on 'The Fats of Life in the Early Modern World, 1500-1750: Matter in Multispecies Medicine' ✨ Sign up at: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... (In-person, IHR Wolfson Room NB02, all are welcome!)

New research fellowship seeking to address the UK’s ‘crisis’ of archaeological curation A leading authority on the interaction between animals, humans and the environment through history has been awarded a prestigious national fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, focusing on the crisis ...

Research funding news! Our very own Prof Naomi Sykes will be spending the next three years working on a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, providing important context on the value of archaeological archives. More details here: news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h...

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

James Hibben, 🐔poulterer of Southwark lived in a house called 👶'the Childs Play' and left to his brother (another poulterer) 👔'my black Cloth Suit of Clothes my best light coloured Suit of Cloth Cloaths and my Drugged Coat and my 👨‍🦳new bobb Wigg'.

Will proved 1736, PROB 11/612/162

Chris Hoban on stage holding an accordian and speaking into microphone.

📢ALBUM ANNOUNCEMENT: A TIME OF MINDING📢

Chris Hoban has been recording all the music he composed as a fellow on the @leverhulme.ac.uk project The Material Culture of Wills!

Sign up here to be notified when the album is released:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Photo: Tom Hurley #EarlyModern 🗃️

Beautiful public outreach! Academic research on archival material "transformed into a series of stunning musical arrangements on stage."

Thanks for sharing 🙂!

Handwritten lines of text that read 'my intent was to leave a hundred pounds to the use of the poore of the parish of Llanaber had it not been that I was wrongfully taxed by Richard Vaughan of Corsey gedol Esqr. and Griffith Williams and Robert Williams'.

This testator would like it to be remembered that 'my intent was to leave a hundred pounds to the use of the poore of the parish of Llanaber had it not been that I was wrongfully taxed by Richard Vaughan of Corsey gedol Esqr. and Griffith Williams and Robert Williams'.

is that ... an anti-bequest?

Thanks Rebecca! Glad to hear that the project has been a help :-)

📢 New Blog Post 📢 over at @materialwills.bsky.social 📜

@lsangha.bsky.social writes about Creative Fellow Chris Hoban's recent performance of music inspired by our research into early modern wills, and his plans for future musical outputs! 🎹🎵🎤

#skystorians #history #earlymodern

Chris Hoban on stage wearing a hat as he performs the song 'No Satten Hatbands'. Next to him a string quartet play.

'What had they just seen and heard? It wasn’t folk, it wasn’t classical, it wasn’t a musical or an opera or a play; it wasn’t shanties, or the blues, or ballads – it was all of those.

To hear for yourself, sign up for news of the album release: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Photo: Tom Hurley

Martin Reeve on stage, reading a will aloud. He has a lively expression on his face.

Chris' Topsham show featured a range of musicians, and included actor Martin Reeve reading extracts from the wills that inspired the music.

Photograph courtesy of Tom Hurley, Devon Digital.

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

Chris Hoban on stage holding an accordian and speaking into microphone.

📢ALBUM ANNOUNCEMENT: A TIME OF MINDING📢

Chris Hoban has been recording all the music he composed as a fellow on the @leverhulme.ac.uk project The Material Culture of Wills!

Sign up here to be notified when the album is released:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Photo: Tom Hurley #EarlyModern 🗃️

Two men on stage playing guitars, one sings into a microphone.

'What a brilliant night! Wills: dry, formal, boring? This was story telling at its best: intriguing, engaging, human!’

In this new blog post, find out what happened when Chris Hoban and his band, The Executors, played to a packed house in Topsham

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

#EarlyModern 🗃️

Photo of Chris Hoban on stage playing the accordian, he looks over at Paul Downes who is also playing an instrument.

Sneak Peak ...

... of a little treat coming tomorrow - a full review of Chris Hoban's wills performance in Topsham last month!

And a very exciting related announcement ...

#EarlyModern 🗃️

📷 Photo courtesy of Tom Hurley, Devon Digital.

Handwritten lines from a will that read 'between Mary my Wife, Richard Hopson Gentleman my Son in Law, and Elizabeth his Wife my Daughter, and John Trevor Esqr my brother'.

A Historian's Round of Applause for Edward Trevor Esquire, who very helpfully began his 1726 will with a who's who of his near relations. 👌📜👏

'between Mary my Wife, Richard Hopson Gentleman my Son in Law, and Elizabeth his Wife my Daughter, and John Trevor Esqr my brother'.

Portrait of an man dressed in a long cirly wig, dressed in extravagent academic robes - red with a white furry collar.

Portrait of a woman in late early modern dress. Her gown is blue with a pattern and low cut neck, she has a long red scraf draped around her.

Here's Wm Johnston & his wife Ann- portraits now in King's High, a private school in Warwick, formerly their house.

The will also includes instructions for a monument in St Mary's church - which does indeed carry the inscription he devised in the will.

www.landorassociation.co.uk/johnsonportr...

Handwritten lines from an 18th-century will.

William Johnston, gent. and doctor of physic left money to the poor folk of two Warwick parishes, to be delivered to them on Christmas day [will proved 1726].

Three lines of handwriting, which are an extract from a 17th-century will.

Sir John Harte's premable refers to a scripural passage often interpreted during the #EarlyModern period as an instruction to write a will:

'thoughte it good to followe that godly cowncell given by the holy Prophett of god to good kinge Ezechias 'Sett thy Howse in order for thou shalt die'🗃️.