Conference: Ruination & Decay [Inverness]
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