University to host trust research fellows to study Lincolnshire seaside and society

Two researchers will undertake major new studies at the University of Lincoln, UK, after successfully securing fellowships through the prestigious Leverhulme Trust.

Dr Hannah Boston and Dr James Pattison were successful in their application to the Trust’s Early Career Fellowship scheme, which supports those still at a relatively early stage of their academic career to undertake significant piece of publishable work.

The pair will be hosted by the University for the next three years whilst they undertake their research.

Dr Boston, currently a Lecturer in Medieval History at Magdalen College, Oxford, will complete a study titled ‘Private charters and the transmission of ideas in English society, 1000-1307’. The research will examine how ideas and practices around loyalty, property and authority developed, were transmitted and experienced across regional society outside the court-attending elite.

Speaking about her success in securing the Fellowship, Dr Boston said: “I’m delighted to have been offered this fellowship and I’m very grateful to both the Leverhulme Trust and the University of Lincoln for this opportunity. My project will focus on how ideas and practices around loyalty, property, and authority developed within regional English society, 1000-c.1307.

“I will study the diffusion and variation of these ideas in the contrasting counties of Lincolnshire and Shropshire through a systematic study of private charters — documents produced within, by, and for regional society — and how these concepts underpinned or disrupted local society. This project will also produce resources to promote further research on charters, in conjunction with the University’s archive and heritage partners. I look forward to contributing to research activity and events both in the city and at the University.”

Dr Pattison, a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Lincoln, will undertake a project entitled ‘Legacies of Empire: Race, Class and Migration at the English Seaside’; an in-depth ethnographic study of the Lincolnshire coast which examines the legacies of empire in a coastal town.

Dr Pattison said: “I am delighted to have been awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and to have the opportunity to further my research activities with the time and space to start a research project, which builds on my previous work in post-industrial towns.

“While so-called ‘left behind’ coastal towns, have been at the centre of political commentary in the context of Brexit and the ‘levelling up’ agenda they remain relatively under researched in urban research on race and migration. This research will move beyond the present-centred orientation of these debates to explore the role played by much longer ideological struggles over race, class and nation. Historically, the English seaside resort was central to national – and therefore, imperial – identity and its subsequent decline raises questions over how this fluctuating status of place relates to contemporary attitudes.”

Andrew Hunter, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, said: “We’re very pleased to have supported Dr’s Boston and Pattison in achieving these Fellowships and look forward to hosting them as they complete their research. This success shows our ever-growing reputation as an institution that values and fosters cutting-edge research.”