October 7, 2024, by Matt Davies

Autumn 2024 in the DTH

The DTH is open for business again with the start of Autumn term, and we have a new team member, some new projects and a new DTH video!

A photograph of student volunteers working in the DTH

DTH student volunteers at work in the DTH – a still from the new DTH video.

New team for 2024 -25.

Leah Guy joins the team as our new Research Associate and will be covering the DTH on Wednesdays. Leah is a part time PhD student from the Centre for Research of Cuba (CFC) in the Dept of Modern Languages and Culture. She joins Abi Spanner who enters her second year with us as Research Associate and covers Fridays.

A head and shoulders portrait photograph of Leah Guy

New DTH Research Associate Leah Guy

In early October we will be welcoming a new team of student volunteers at the annual DTH Project Pitch event. Recruited from across the Faculty of Arts the new volunteers will each choose which ‘real world’ project they would like to work on throughout the academic year.

DTH Student projects.

This year’s projects include Digital Marketing, 3D photogrammetry, and digital archiving projects that will capture the Hennessy collection of 1960s Cuban newspapers, journals dating back to the early 20th century from the Hunter Archaeological society of Sheffield, and the Classics and Archaeology departments extensive 35mm slide collection which dates back to the 1950s.
Before starting work on projects, volunteers will enjoy visits to the University of Nottingham Museum, the Centre for Research of Cuba, and Manuscripts and Special Collections. They will also attend workshops including artefact handling, DSLR photography, and a Marketing workshop with members of the Humanities Marketing team.

New student projects starting this year.

The first project will form a strand of the broader Visioning a Creative and Cultural County (VCCC) project led, on behalf of UoN, by Daniel Mutibwa of CMVS. Students will research, respond to and produce 3D models of objects that have cultural resonance to Leicestershire’s LGBTQIA+ community. Working with Daniel and staff from Leicester County Council they will choose and research the artefacts during visits to Melton Carnegie Museum and Leicestershire’s Collections Resource centre in November. They will then work with me in the DTH and Susie Sherwin in the Archaeology labs to create digital 3D versions. The models and responses will form part of the Villiers Revealed – Darling of the Stuart Court exhibition at Melton Carnegie Museum which runs from Oct 5th until 28th June 2025 The exhibition centres around the recently restored portrait of George Villier, first Duke of Buckingham (1592 – 1628) who was himself, subject of intense speculation around the nature of his relationship with King James I/IV, which continues today and has often been erased, misinterpreted or encoded by cultural historians.

Last year we successfully launched the Hunter Archaeological Society journal digitisation project with Classics and Archaeology’s Dr Anna Bloxam. That project will be running again this year, and we are also in the process of recruiting students to work on a new project with Anna, this time in collaboration with Derbyshire Historical Environmental Record (HER). The students will work in the DTH to digitise excavation reports, link them to the HER’s online system, and update the associated monument record. This will comprise a trip to see the archive held at the HER in Matlock, where students will also be trained in how to use the database, and digital/metadata capture training and project work in the DTH.

New video!

Finally, DTH is pleased to launch its new information video which was produced by one of last year’s DTH Research Associates, Abigail Parker. Abi, along with Xiangzhen He (Cherry), finished her studentship in the DTH in June and we would like to take this opportunity to thanks them for all of the great work they did with us and wish them the very best!

Check out the new video and find out all about the DTH, who we are, what we do and how FoA staff and students can make the best of our resources here.

Posted in About DTH