Taking cue from the of 'Intangible Cultural Heritage', this multidisciplinary research group broadly aims to encompass unwritten, unofficial histories and vernacular culture relating to all forms of media, events, traditions, rituals, spaces and places.
Our priority is to bring together a community of researchers from across the university through talks, seminars, and collaborations, with the aim of growing Sheffield Hallam's national and international reputation and expertise in cultural heritage research.
Our research interests
Vernacular culture and contemporary folklore is often unrecorded or overlooked, and ranges from that which might be seen as historical and ancient to the extremely contemporary.
Our interests concern unearthing, preserving and archiving material with clear links to cultural contexts, and building professional approaches to archiving, creating and sharing knowledge.
Our interests span unrealised cultural visions: unbuilt cinemas; oral histories; unproduced, hauntological or lost visions of film and television; and shadow histories of what might have been.
This approach of media archaeology aims to examine as yet unearthed media, stories and legends that remain untold or unexamined: what might have been, that which is everyday (past, present and future) and how and why ideas, events, traditions, narratives and stories may (or may not) have come to be/pass.
Recent projects
Examples of recent and current research projects in Cultural Heritage include:
- David Clarke’s collaboration with the and on the
- Clarke’s work with the and the
- James Fenwick’s work as co-convener of the
- Fenwick’s work on unmade films and the lost histories of cinema
- Megan Kenny’s research on paranormal belief in contemporary daily life
- Andrew Robinson’s work on UK Covid-related customs and vernacular culture
- Diane Rodgers’s keynote lecture at York
- Rodgers’s collaborations with the and
- Fenwick and Rodgers’s work on the edited collection The Legacy of the X-Files, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2023
- Centre for Contemporary Legend (CCL)'s acquisition of the Professor John Widdowson folklore archive, as part of plan to develop an archival acquisitions strategy.
- CCL’s guest editorship of a contemporary legend-themed special issue of the journal .
Past events
- Members of the research group have organised two international conferences including the Centre for Contemporary Legend’s inaugural symposium in November 2018 and in September 2019.
- In 2021, Diane Rodgers introduced a Halloween triple-bill screening of
- In March 2022, Diane Rodgers presented a talk aimed at 15-25 year-olds at the as part of the festival’s Behind the Scenes’ events at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts
- In 2022, David Clarke presented his research into the legend of the Anglo-Saxon Earl Waltheof and his links with Hallamshire with public lectures for the and the
Work with us
The research group has an ongoing dialogue both with individual scholars, groups and societies that share our research interests both within the UK and internationally. These include the , and
Contact James Fenwick, David Clarke or Diane Rodgers to discuss collaboration.
