Friday 4 September 2026

Programme

Timings are provisional and may be adjusted closer to the day.


09:00–09:30
Registration & coffee

09:30–09:40
Welcome

Daniel Grey & William Bainbridge


09:40–10:40
Panel 1: Institutions and Belonging

Steven Spencer (Salvation Army International Heritage Centre)

Heritage, museums and memorialisation in the Salvation Army

Amber Flood (University of Exeter)

Belonging to elite knowledge networks: how subscription libraries shaped and maintained power structures in the English provinces

Dr Lucinda Matthews-Jones (Liverpool John Moores University), Dr Jane Skelding, and Professor Georgina Brewis (UCL, in absence)

'A trusted, second home': belonging in settlement history and belonging in the settlement community

followed by discussion


10:40–11:00
Coffee break

11:00–12:00
Panel 2: Empire, Race and Collecting

Professor Caroline Bressey (University College London)

Hostile environments: Victorian prison archives

Dr Lewis Ryder (University of Lincoln)

The Ashanti Spoils (1896): Crown agents, museums and Scotland Yard

Shriya Dasgupta (Purdue University)

The Burden of Empire: The Impact of Colonial Masculinity on Armed anti-Colonial Resistance in India

followed by discussion


12:00–13:00
Lunch

13:00–14:00
Panel 3: Care, Craft and Control

Dr Catherine Phipps (University of Bristol)

Coercive Care for Penitent Women: The Reform Home for Sex Workers in Wellclose Square, 1830–1875

Professor Alana Harris (King's College London)

Lacemaking and the Therapeutic: Weaving Everyday Histories of the Victorian Asylum

Amy Stone (Royal Holloway, University of London)

In their own hands: reconstructing difference through the lives of nineteenth-century craftspeople

followed by discussion


14:00–14:15
Break

14:15–15:15
Panel 4: Voice, Memory and the Popular

Dr Deborah Jeffries

To drink or not to drink? How legislation affected entertainment seekers in the wake of the 1843 Theatres Act

Tilly Guthrie (University of Sheffield)

Touching community: tactile literacy and blind identity in nineteenth-century Britain

Dr Fern Riddell

'No-one loves you more': Recovering Queen Victoria's secret marriage to John Brown, through The John Brown Family Archive

followed by discussion


15:15–15:30
Tea break

15:30–16:30
Keynote: Professor Jane Hamlett

Royal Holloway, University of London — chaired, with Q&A


16:30–16:45
Closing remarks

16:45–17:00
Depart