12 December 2019

Ruination & Decay

Multi-discplinary conference organised by Humanities & Arts Research Cluster (HARC). Venue: UHI, Inverness Campus.

The conference fee is set at £15 for the two days, which includes refreshments breaks and the conference dinner on Wednesday 11th December. The conference fee for students is £5.

To book, please visit the Eventbrite page here

Further details UHI website

Conference Progamme

Wednesday 11th December

 9.30am Registration Opens

10.10 – 11.00 Conference introduction and presentation 1: Chair: Colin Richards

Mike Parker Pearson (UCL) Stonehenge: ‘How grand! How wonderful! How incomprehensible!’

11.00 – 11.20 Break

Session 1 Chair: Conchúr Ó Giollagáin

11.20 – 11.50 Mandy Haggith (UHI):  Bringing people back from the dead: fiction and poetry inspired by ruins

11.50 – 12.20 Simon Murray (University of Glasgow): Performing the ruin: some questions of materiality and dramaturgy

12.20 – 12.35 Discussion

12.35 – 1.30 Lunch

1.30 – 1.45 Conference Address: Crichton Lang (UHI Principle & Vice-Chancellor)

Session 2 Chair: Lesley Mickel

1.45 – 2.15 Siân Jones (University of Stirling): Negotiating decay: the temporal and material paradoxes of heritage conservation

2.15 – 2.45 Matt Ritchie (Forestry & Land Scotland): Set in concrete? Considering conservation and character at Lossie’s WWII coastal crust

2.45 – 3.15 Philippa Woodcock (UHI): The ruins of ambition: tracing the fragments of Valiois Milan

3.15 – 3.25 Discussion

3.25 – 3.45 Break

Session 3 Chair: Lindsay Blair

3.45 – 4.15 Antonia Thomas (UHI): “Ruins in Reverse: Time-Travelling in Contemporary Art and Contemporary Archaeology”

4.15 - 4.45 Alessandra Campoli (UHI): From modern ruins to human decay. Creative practices and ‘students as researchers’

4.45 – 5.15 Keith Mcintyre (UHI): Disturbed ground – immortalising the disappeared

5.15 – 5.25 Discussion

7.00pm Conference Dinner

 

Thursday 12th December

9.20 – 9.30 Day 2 - Introduction: Neil Simco (UHI - Vice Principal of Research)

 Conference presentation 2 Chair: Iain Robertson

 9.30 – 10.15 Hayden Lorimer (University of Edinburgh): Fortifying the ruin: the nightwatchman, the artists, the trespassers and their antagonisms

10.15 – 10. 35 Break

Session 4 Chair: Iain Robertson

10.35 – 11.05 Roxane Permar (UHI): Nuclear families

11.05 – 11.35 Fiona Smith (Robert Gordon University): Abandoned Places: the aestheticization of decay and the dark retrospective gaze

11.35 – 11.50 Discussion

12.50 – 12.10 Break

Session 5 Chair: Joanna Rodgers

12.10 – 12.40 Vicki Cummings (Uclan): Decaying bodies, ruined tombs: the afterlife of Neolithic chambered tombs in Britain and Ireland

12.40 – 1.10 Fiona J. Mackenzie (Canna House, National Trust for Scotland): Deserted Village on Mingulay: the Canna Archives- a folklore phoenix

1.10 – 1.20 Discussion

1.20 – 2.00 Lunch

Session 6 Chair: Ragnhild Ljosland

2.00 – 2.30 Hugh Cheape (UHI) Bàthadh nan Gleann – ‘the drowning of the Glens’: locating human ecology in the AMBER Project.

2.30 – 3.00 Anne Bevan (UHI) Beside the Ocean of time: mapping the sound

3.00 – 3.10 Discussion

3.10 – 3.25 Break

3.25 – 3.55 Kenny Brophy (University of Glasgow): Lingering timbers: the decline and fall of monuments of wood

3.55 – 4.25 Maya Darrell Hewins (UHI): From nitrate fires to bitrot – decay and destruction as a constant in the life of moving images

4.25 – 4.55 Paul Shanks (UHI): The heart of the Highlands: Tourism, ghosts and ruination in Inverness

 4.55-5.15 Final discussion and conference conclusion: Michael Rayner: UHI Dean of Research