Lore of the Land: Stories of wetlands, woods and weather

How have landscapes been represented and perceived throughout time? What do the stories we tell about our environments reveal about ourselves? And how can our historical relationship with the land help us reconsider our connection to the natural world today? Discover the rich folklore of the British Isles, with Academy Fellows and funded researchers.

Professor Melanie Giles FBA, Professor Fiona Stafford FBA and British Academy-funded researcher Professor Marilina Cesario will each spotlight a different feature of the land: bogs, trees and weather. They will investigate the myths and meanings associated with these natural phenomena, revealing our evolving relationship to the land in an age of climate breakdown.

A special exhibition about 'boglore', curated by Professor Melanie Giles FBA, will be open from 18:00. Featuring installations by Rose Ferraby and ceramics by Liz Ellis, the exhibition conjures the creative ‘deep time’ enchantment of the bog in the heart of the British Academy.

Melanie is a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in Iron Age Britain. She is a Professor in European Prehistory at the University of Manchester and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022. Her research draws together strands of the archaeology of identity and personhood, with studies of landscape and place, alongside material culture and art. She uses a mix of ethnographic and archaeological theories and methodologies, to investigate both past and present communities.

Fiona is Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Somerville College and Academic Lead for the Environmental Humanities programme at TORCH. She works on literature of the Romantic period and on their literary influences on modern poetry. Her research interests also include late 18th and early 19th-century culture; Irish and Scottish literature (post 1700); Archipelagic literature and art; place and nature writing (old and new); trees, flowers and their cultural history; environmental humanities; literature and the visual arts. Fiona was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2013, and she is also a Fellow the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Marilina is a Professor in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests include manuscript studies, science (mainly astronomy and weather), magic and prognostications in Latin, Old English and Middle English, and the relationship between weather, health and time. In 2017 she was awarded an APEX award by the UK’s national academies and a year later in 2018, she was the recipient of a ‘British Academy Rising Star Public Engagement Award’. She is currently completing a monograph on ‘The Signs of the Weather in Anglo-Saxon England’, for which she was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.

This event will have live subtitles provided by StageTEXT, delivered by MyClearText.

Free, booking required.

Event schedule:

• Doors open: 18:00
• Exhibition and bar open: 18:00
• Panel starts: 18:30
• Audience Q&A: 19:30
• Event ends: 19:45
• Bar and exhibtion close: 21:00

This event will take place both in-person at the British Academy's home at 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, St James, London, SW1Y 5AH and will be live-streamed via Vimeo. A link will be sent to online attendees.

If you have any questions about this event, please refer to our Public Events FAQs. If your question is not answered, please email ZXZlbnRzIHwgdGhlYnJpdGlzaGFjYWRlbXkgISBhYyAhIHVr or call the Events Team on +44(0)20 7969 5210.

The event will be live-streamed and recorded, and there may be photography taking place. Please speak to a member of the team if you do not wish to feature in photographs.

Image credit: Dynamic Earth by Rose Ferraby

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