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Extended Information

Dr Keith D. Lilley

Reader in Historical Geography 

Room 02.033 
School of Geography
Queen's University Belfast
Belfast BT7 1NN
Northern Ireland, UK

Tel: +44 (0)2890 973363
Fax: +44 (0)2890 321280
Email: k.lilley@qub.ac.uk

 


‘On the camino in Spain’, March 2004

 

‘Studying a medieval portolan chart
at Zurich city archives’, January 2009

 

 

Historical geographer and urban morphologist

I joined GAP in 1999 as lecturer in human geography. I began my academic career at the University of Birmingham, gaining a PhD in 1995. In 1996 I was awarded a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship and took this up at Royal Holloway (University of London) in the Department of Geography. At Queen's I primarily teach modules on urban, cultural and historical geography, in both contemporary and historical contexts. This continues a long tradition of teaching historical geography at Queen's. Currently in GAP I teach undergraduate modules on urban landscapes (GAP3034), cultural geographies (GGY2041), research methods (GGY2024), and human geography (GGY1005). I am Programme Director for the School’s Heritage Science taught postgraduate programme, contributing a module on cultural landscapes (GAP7108).

Research interests and expertise

My research interests are in historical geography, landscape history and urban morphology. Broadly I use mapping and cartography as interpretative frames to explore the materiality and imagining of space, place and landscape during the later Middle Ages (CE 1000-1500). This brings me into close contact with other medievalists in disciplines such as history and archaeology. While I am one of the very few geographers working in the UK on the middle ages, medieval historical geography has been and continues to be a very distinctive aspect of research in the Geography at Queen's, making contributions that reach across a range of disciplines concerned with the medieval past.

 I am currently engaged with developing two innovative research agendas:

  • First, in the context of digital humanities research, I use spatial technologies to explore and understand the medieval world. This work began in 2003 with a project called 'Mapping the Medieval Urban Landscape' – funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (running from June 2003 to May 2005) – which used GIS and GPS to map and analyse medieval urban forms in 3D. The project focused on a group of 'new towns' established in the reign of Edward I in England and Wales between 1277 and 1307. The project web-site has more detailed information (http://www.qub.ac.uk/urban_mapping). The project resulted in an interactive online atlas of medieval towns, a digital resource for a wide public audience hosted by Archaeology Data Service at the University of York (available at http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/atlas_ahrb_2005). A further, related project, ‘Mapping the Realm’ (funded by the British Academy) also used GIS, this time to create a digital version of the medieval 'Gough map' of Britain, work completed in collaboration with the Bodleian Library in Oxford (for more details see http://www.qub.ac.uk/urban_mapping/gough_map). The web-served GIS resource that resulted from this research, the Digital Gough, is also accessible via http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/users/nnj/goughmap.htm, while the analytical results of the project published in the Annals of the AAG and Imago Mundi. A further, third, GIS-based mapping project is ‘Mapping medieval Chester’, funded by the AHRC (2008-09); a collaborative project with literary historians at Swansea University (Catherine Clarke and Helen Fulton) exploring literary and visual mappings of the medieval city. The web-resource resulting from this project was developed with the Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) at King’s College London and is accessible at: http://www.medievalchester.ac.uk. Lastly, further funding from the AHRC (via its ‘Beyond Text’ programme) is enabling me to continue research on the Gough Map. This new project, called “Linguistic Geographies”, has created an online version of the map – see www.goughmap.org – in collaboration with DDH at King’s College London and with the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Together, these four GIS-based projects demonstrate the role that historical geographers have in the fast-moving world of digital humanities research, as well as the potential spatial technologies have in medieval studies. Within QUB, this ongoing work represents a strand of GAP’s Spatial Technologies Research Unit (STRU), while beyond Queen’s I am leading a new European research network called Spatial Technologies and the Medieval City (SteMCity) connecting archaeologists, historians and geographers working at the Universities of Granada, Toulouse, Padua, Antwerp, Liverpool and York – for more details see http://www.lettere.unipd.it/discant/CatMedievale/STM_home.html

 

  • Secondly, I am also pursuing an intellectual research agenda based upon the premise that geographers have much to contribute to medieval studies through our particular geographical ‘way of seeing’ the world. To this end I have spent much of the past decade arguing that geographers need to engage more with the medieval period. This I have done through working on the medieval city, looking at urban ideals and practices in the context of medieval Europe. This work is published in several journal articles, for example in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, as well as in a book-length study (published in 2009 by Reaktion Books) called City and Cosmos: the medieval world in urban form (further details and testimonials at http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/book.html?id=367). This builds upon the work I have done (and continue to do) on medieval urban forms - mapping medieval urban landscapes - but considers more the symbolism that urban forms had in the medieval imagination. My approach has been to study medieval theories of the city, though using contemporary depictions and descriptions, as well as medieval political and natural philosophy, scientific treatises and theological texts. This has revealed the importance of the metaphorical associations between the city and the cosmos in the middle ages, connections I believe that were important not only in how the city was imagined in the Latin west by the Christian faithful, but also in how it was formed as a material built space, through urban planning and design, and how it was experienced as a lived space by those who were there, particularly at certain times of the year in various local civic rituals and performances. A continuation of this theorized work on medieval urbanism, and building upon the findings of my AHRC ‘Mapping the Medieval Urban Landscape’ project, was made possible thanks to a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for 2006-7. This enabled me to write a new book, provisionally called Cities and Sovereigns, which explores the urban exploits and imaginations of medieval kings, particularly King Edward I. Latterly, and largely as a consequence of analyzing the Gough Map using GIS, I have begun to look in more depth at geographical knowledge and ideas in the Middle Ages, exploring more broadly medieval cosmography, cartography and geography, and this has received a helpful boost through my convening (with the late Denis Cosgrove) an Ahmanson Foundation funded conference at the Center for Medieval Studies at UCLA (May 2009) on the subject of ‘Mapping medieval geographies’ – a subject largely neglected by geography’s historians today – further details of which are available at http://www.cmrs.ucla.edu/programs/conferences.html).I have since edited the papers arising from this conference, and the resulting volume, Mapping Medieval Geographies, is currently under review by Cambridge University Press. This interest is continuing through my own work on medieval cartography, for example on the Gough Map, as well as through organising international colloquia, such as “The Language of Maps” colloquium (held in Oxford in June 2011, see www.goughmap.org/colloquium), and themed sessions on medieval cartography and geography convened at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference 2010, and the International Medieval Congress in 2010 and 2011.Through pursuing these two research agendas my principal aim is to ensure that the medieval period remains a visible and viable presence upon geography’s disciplinary ‘map’, while at the same time demonstrating to medievalists in cognate subjects, such as history, archaeology and architecture, how geographers have so much still to contribute to ongoing debates. Evidence of this direction is my recent work published internationally in peer-reviewed journals (2009) in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and Imago Mundi, as well as (2011) in Dialogues in Human Geography. Please do contact me if you wish to explore doctoral study at Queen’s in any of those areas of geographical research outlined above.

 

With pursuing both of these research agendas my principal aim is to ensure that the medieval period remains a visible and viable presence upon geography’s disciplinary ‘map’, while at the same time demonstrating to medievalists in cognate subjects, such as history, archaeology and architecture, how geographers have so much still to contribute to ongoing debates. Please do contact me if you wish to explore doctoral study at Queen’s in any of those areas of geographical research outlined above.

 

Measures of Esteem 

  • Nominated UK Representative, International Commission for the History of Towns (ICHT) (2011-)
  • Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California at Los Angeles (2008)
  • Leverhulme Research Fellow (2006-2007)
    • Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (2006)
  • Invited lectures (overseas, selected): University of Zurich (2011); University of Coimbra (2010); University of Padua (2010; 2011); University of Zurich (2009); University of Bordeaux (2009); UCLA (2008); University of Toulouse (2008); Fordham University (2007); Loyola College Baltimore (2007); University of Tours (2007); University of Münster (2002).
  • Offices held (recent, selected): Board member, British Historic Towns Trust (2007-); Treasurer, International Seminar on Urban Form (2005-2008).
  • Editorial board member: British Historic Towns Atlas; Journal of Environment, Space and Place.
  • PhD External Examiner (University of Amsterdam; University of York)

 

PhD Students:

  • Catherine Porter, “GIS applications in the cartographic history of Ireland” – current (co-supervised with Dr Chris Lloyd, School of GAP, QUB)
  • Will Liddle, “Articulations and conceptualizations of space in the Middle Ages” – current (co-supervised with Dr Stephen Kelly, School of English, QUB)
  • Padma Marepalli Rohilla, “Value based conservation and colonial built heritage in India” – awarded 2007.
  • Glynn Kelso, “Performing architecture: domestic buildings in medieval England” – awarded 2006

 

All publications in chronological order (** = REF publications 2013)

Sole-authored books

**Lilley K D 2009 City and Cosmos: the Medieval World in Urban Form (Reaktion Books: Chicago/London), pp.256, ISBN 978 1 86189 441 0 6.

Lilley K D 2002 Urban Life in the Middle Ages – 1000-1450 (Palgrave: London/New York) pp.295; ISBN 0 333 71249 8 (pbk), ISBN 0 333 71248 X (hbk).

Journal articles

**Lilley K D 2011 ‘Geography’s medieval history: a forgotten enterprise?’, Dialogues in Human Geography 1(2), 147-62.

Lilley K D 2011 ‘Quid sit mundus: making space for medieval geographies’, Dialogues in Human Geography 1(2), 191-7.

**Lilley K D and Lloyd C D 2009 ‘Mapping the realm: a new look at the Gough Map of Britain (c.1360)’, Imago Mundi 61(1), 1-28.

**Lloyd C D and Lilley K D 2009 ‘Cartographic veracity in medieval mapping: analysing geographical variation in the Gough Map of Great Britain’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99(1), 27-48.

Lilley K D, Lloyd C, and Trick S 2007 ‘Designs and designers of medieval ‘new towns’ in Wales’, Antiquity 81, 279-93.

Lilley K D 2007 ‘Agents and agency in the English medieval city’, Journal of Urban History 33, 1048-1056.

Lilley K D 2006 ‘On the nature of medieval geography’, H-HistGeog (September, 2006) (http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.cgi?path=320931161613904)

Lilley K D, Lloyd C and Trick S 2005 ‘Mapping medieval urban landscapes: the design and planning of Edward I’s new towns of England and Wales’, Antiquity 79 (No. 103), project gallery # 3.

Lilley K D , Lloyd C, Trick S and Graham, C 2005 ‘Analysing and mapping medieval urban forms using GPS and GIS’, Urban Morphology 9, 1-9.

Lilley K D 2004 ‘Cities of God? Medieval urban forms and their Christian symbolism’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 29, 296-313.

Lilley K D 2004 ‘Mapping cosmopolis: moral topographies of the medieval city’, Environment and Planning d: Society and Space 22, 681-98.

Hubbard P J and Lilley K D 2004 ‘Pacemaking the modern city: the urban politics of speed and slowness’, Environment and Planning d: Society and Space, 22, 273-294.

Larkham P J and Lilley K D 2003 ‘Plans, planners and city images: place promotion and civic boosterism in British reconstruction planning’, Urban History, 30 (2), 183-205.

Lilley K D 2003 ‘On display: planning exhibitions as civic propaganda or public consultation?’, Planning History, 25, 3-8.

Hubbard P J, Faire L J and Lilley K D 2003 ‘Contesting the modern city: reconstruction and everyday life in post-war Coventry’, Planning Perspectives, 18, 377-97.

Hubbard P J, Faire L J and Lilley K D 2003 ‘Memorials to modernity? Public art in the “City of the Future”’, Landscape Research, 28(2), 147-169.

Hubbard P J, Lilley K D and Faire L J 2002 'Remembering post-war reconstruction: Modernism and city planning in Coventry, 1940-1962', Planning History, 24, 7-20.

Lilley K D 2002 ‘“One immense goldfield!” British imaginings of the Australian gold rushes, 1851-59’, Landscape Research, 27(1), 67-82.

Lilley K D 2001 ‘Urban planning and the design of towns in the Middle Ages: the Earls of Devon and their ‘new towns’’, Planning Perspectives, 16, 1-24. Lilley K D 2000 ‘Mapping the medieval city: plan analysis and urban history’, Urban History, 27(1), 5-30.

Lilley K D 2000 ‘Non urbe, non vico, non castris: territorial control and the colonization and urbanization of Wales and Ireland under Anglo-Norman lordship’, Journal of Historical Geography, 26 (4), 517-31.

Hubbard P J and Lilley K D 2000 ‘Selling the past: heritage-tourism and place identity in Stratford upon Avon’, Geography, 85, 221-232 Lilley K D 1999 ‘Modern visions of the medieval city: competing conceptions of urbanism in European civic design’, Environment and Planning b: Planning and Design, 26, 427-446.

Lilley K D 1999 ‘Urban landscapes and the cultural politics of territorial control in Anglo-Norman England’, Landscape Research, 24, 5-23.

Lilley K D 1999 ‘Geometry and medieval town planning: a reply’, Urban Morphology, 3(2), 111-114.

Lilley K D 1998 ‘Urban design in medieval Coventry: the planning of Much and Little Park Street within the Earl of Chester’s fee’, Midland History, 23, 1-20.

Lilley K D 1998 ‘Taking measures across the medieval landscape: aspects of urban design before the Renaissance’, Urban Morphology, 2(2), 82-92.

Lilley K D 1998 ‘Geometry, urban planning and town design in the high Middle Ages’, Planning History, 20, 7-15.

Lilley K D 1994 ‘A Warwickshire medieval borough: Brinklow and the contribution of town-plan analysis', Transactions of the Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society, 98, 51-61.

Book chapters

Lilley K D forthcoming 2012 ‘GIS and digital mappings’; Gunn S and Faire L (eds) Methods in History (Sage, London).

Lilley K D forthcoming 2012 ’Mapping Plantagenet rule through the Gough Map of Great Britain’; in Stercken M and Baumgärtner I (eds), Herrschaft verorten. Politische Kartographie des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (Medienwandel - Medienwechsel - Medienwissen, Zürich).

Lilley K D forthcoming 2012 ‘Imagined landscapes? Mapping medieval Chester through literature, cartography and information technology’; in Lavaud S (ed), Représenter la Ville (Ausonius Éditions, Bordeaux).

Vetch P, Clarke C, and Lilley K D forthcoming 2011 ‘Between text and image: digital rendering of a late medieval city’; in Nelson B and Terras M (eds) Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture (Tempe: RSA / Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies).

Lilley K D 2011 ‘Digital cartographies and medieval geographies’; in Daniels S, DeLyser D, Ketchum J and Richardson D (eds) Envisioning Landscapes, Making Worlds. Geography and the Humanities (Routledge, London), 25-33; ISBN 978-0-415-58977-2.

Lilley K D 2011 ‘Urban mappings: visualizing late medieval Chester in cartographic and textual form’; in Clarke C (ed), Mapping the Medieval City (University of Wales Press, Cardiff), 19-41; ISBN 978 0 7083 2392 2.

Lilley K D 2009 ‘The landscapes of Edward’s new towns: their planning and design’; in Williams D and Kenyon J (eds) The Impact of the Edwardian Castles on Wales (Oxbow, Oxford), 99-113; ISBN 978 1 84217 380 010.

Lilley K D, Lloyd C and Trick S 2007 ‘Mapping medieval townscapes: GIS applications in landscape history and settlement study’; in Gardiner, M and Rippon, S (eds) Medieval Landscapes (Windgather, Bollington), 27-42; ISBN 978 1 905119 18 9.

Lloyd C D and Lilley K D 2006 ‘Examining spatial variation in the cartographic veracity of the Gough Map’; in Priestnall G and Aplin P (eds) GISUK 2006. Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 14th Annual Conference. 5th–7th April 2006 University of Nottingham (University of Nottingham, Nottingham), 121–125.

Lilley K D 2006 ‘Conceptions and perceptions of urban futures in early post-war Britain: some everyday experiences of the rebuilding of Coventry, 1940-1962’; in Boyd Whyte I (ed) The Man-Made Future (Routledge, London), 145-156; ISBN 0 415 35789 6.

Lilley K D 2005 ‘Urban landscapes and their design: creating town from country in the later Middle Ages’; in Dyer C C and Giles K (eds) Town and Country, 1100-1500, Society for Medieval Archaeology monograph (Maney, Oxford), 223-243; ISBN 1 904350 28 3.

Lilley K D 2003 ‘Reading the medieval urban landscape: approaches to the morphological study of landscape’; in Munro D and Doherty A (eds) Reading the Landscape (COBRIG & SAGT, Glasgow), 70-82; ISSN 0140-2682.

Lilley K D 2002 ‘Imagined geographies of the ‘Celtic fringe’ – the cultural construction of the Other in medieval Wales and Ireland’; in Harvey D, Jones R, McInroy N and Milligan C (eds) Celtic Geographies. Old Culture, New Times (Routledge, London), 21-36; ISBN 0 415 22397 0.

Lilley K D 2000 ‘Landscape mapping and symbolic form: drawing as a creative medium in cultural geography’; in Cook I, Crouch D, Naylor S, and Ryan J (eds) Cultural Turns/ Geographical Turns (Longman, London), 231-245; ISBN 0 582 36887 1.

Lilley K D 2000 ‘Decline or decay? Urban landscapes in late-medieval England’; in Slater T R (ed) Towns in Decline. AD100-1600 (Ashgate, Aldershot), 235-265; ISBN 0 7546 0084 X.

Lilley K D 1998 ‘Trading places: monastic initiative and the development of high medieval Coventry’; in Slater T R and Rosser G (eds) The Church and the Medieval Town (Ashgate, Aldershot), 177-208; ISBN 1 84014 213 8.

Lilley K D 1997 ‘Colonialism and urbanism in high medieval Europe: identifying morphologies of urban change’; in De Boe G and Verhaeghe F (eds) Urbanism in Medieval Europe (Zellik, Belgium), 189-204; ISBN 90 75230 02 8.

Lilley K D 1994 ‘Coventry's topographical development: the impact of the priory', in Demidowicz, G (ed) Coventry's First Cathedral (Watkins, Stamford), 72-96; ISBN 1 871615 49 6.

Research Monographs

Lilley K D, Lloyd C and Trick S 2005 Mapping Medieval Townscapes: a digital atlas of the new towns of Edward I, e-publication (ADS, University of York): http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/atlas_ahrb_2005

Lilley K D 1999 Norman Towns in Southern England: Urban Morphogenesis in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight 1066-1215; Urban Morphology Research Monograph 5 (University of Birmingham, School of Geography and Environmental Sciences), pp.145; ISBN 0 7044 85281.

Lilley K D 1996 The Norman Town in Dyfed: A Preliminary Study of Urban Form; Urban Morphology Research Monograph 1 (University of Birmingham, School of Geography and Environmental Sciences), pp.98; ISBN 0 7044 16484.

Reference works

Lilley K D 2010 ‘Medieval urban design’; in Hutchinson R, Beauregard B, Crang M, and Aalbers M (eds), Sage Encyclopaedia of Urban Studies (Sage, London); ISBN 9781412914321.

Lilley K D 2010 ‘Borough’; in Topalov C, Coudroy de Linne L, Depaule J-C and Marin B (eds.), L’Aventure des Mots de la Ville. Á travers le temps, les langues, les sociétés (Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris), 154-59 ; ISBN : 978-2-221-11204-5.

Lilley K D and Reeder D A 2010 ‘City’ ; in Topalov C, Coudroy de Linne L, Depaule J-C and Marin B (eds.), L’Aventure des Mots de la Ville. Á travers le temps, les langues, les sociétés (Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris), 308-313; ISBN : 978-2-221-11204-5.

Lilley K D 2010 ‘Town’ ; in Topalov C, Coudroy de Linne L, Depaule J-C and Marin B (eds.), L’Aventure des Mots de la Ville. Á travers le temps, les langues, les sociétés (Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris), 1226-1231, 1234; ISBN : 978-2-221-11204-5.

Lilley K D 2009 ‘Medieval geography’; in Thrift N and Kitchin R (eds) International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography (Elsevier, Oxford), volume 7, 21-31; ISBN-10: 0-08-044911-5.

Lilley K D 2009 ‘Denis Cosgrove’; Thrift N and Kitchin R (eds) International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography (Elsevier, Oxford), volume 2, 305-6; ISBN-10: 0-08-044911-5.

Lilley K D 2009 ‘Urban morphology’; Thrift N and Kitchin R (eds) International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography (Elsevier, Oxford), volume 12, 66-9; ISBN-10: 0-08-044911-5.

Lilley K D 2009 ‘Denis E. Cosgrove, 1948-2008’ [obituary], Social & Cultural Geography 10, 219-224.

Lilley KD 2008 ‘Faith and devotion’; in Short J R, Hubbard P J and Hall T (eds) The Compendium of Urban Studies (Sage, London), 28-46.

Lilley K D 2004 ‘Denis Cosgrove’; in Hubbard P J, Kitchin R and Valentine G (eds) Key Thinkers on Space and Place (Sage, London), 84-89; ISBN 0 7619 4962 3.

Lilley K D 2004 ‘Brian Harley’; in Hubbard P J, Kitchin R and Valentine G (eds) Key Thinkers on Space and Place (Sage, London), 174-180; ISBN 0 7619 4962 312.

Larkham P J and Lilley K D 2001 Planning the ‘City of Tomorrow’: British Reconstruction Planning, 1939-1952: an annotated bibliography (Inch, Pickering), pp.65; ISBN 0 9514277 1 7. 38.

 

Web-based digital research resources