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Dr Briony Widdis is an ESCR Postdoctoral Fellow whose research concerns the legacies of empire and colonialism in Northern Ireland, and the role of museums in these debates. She uses public anthropology and social history to explore how contemporary identities connect with colonial collections. Briony's interdisciplinary approach engages with both academic and museum research, including collaborating with living communities, and with historical perspectives represented within collections and archives. Her current ESRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship, ‘Museums, Empire and Northern Irish Identity’, aims to improve understanding of how colonial collections relate to contemporary social issues impacted by the museum sector. These include community identities, the representation of diverse groups, the role of museums in divided societies. |
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Dr Hiroki Shin is a Vice-Chancellor’s Illuminate Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast and a research associate at the Research and Public History Department, Science Museum, London. He is interested in the social and cultural history of energy, transport and the environment from the nineteenth century to the present. In his work, he considers the impact of modern energy-intensive societies on culture, everyday life and the natural environment. His current project examines the role of cultural and heritage institutions – museums, science centres, archives and heritage sites – across the United Kingdom, Europe, America and Asia in response to the climate crisis. The project aims to foster an understanding and mobilisation of the cultural sector’s expertise and capacity to shape the public’s understanding of energy technology to address society’s need for a cultural adaptation to climate change. |
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Olivia Dee is an oral historian of gender, women and reproductive rights. She is now a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queens University Belfast. She has produced research on oral history, mother and baby institutions, abortion, and the legal reform of reproductive rights in the UK. Her fellowship examines Northern Irish women’s experiences of unmarried pregnancy, including gestation, labour, motherhood, mother and baby homes, postnatal care, abortion, adoption, and miscarriage. This project will utilise oral history to analyse women’s experiences of unmarried pregnancy itself, as well as the long-lasting effects of the stigma and trauma that often followed. |
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Maurice J Casey is a Research Fellow at HAPP, working on the AHRC-funded project Queer Northern Ireland: Sexuality before Liberation. Maurice’s research at QUB focuses on histories of sexuality in early 20th century Ulster. He also has a research expertise in the history of international communism, in addition to wide-ranging experience in public history. His two exhibitions, Out in the World: Ireland’s LGBTQ+ Diaspora and Revolutionary Routes: Ireland and the Black Atlantic, opened at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Additionally, Maurice has contributed as a researcher and interviewee for historical podcasts, radio and TV. His current book project is a narrative history of an unusual hotel in interwar Moscow, the Hotel Lux. |