People
Dr Ben Anderson
Primary Investigator, Keele University
Ben Anderson is a Lecturer in Environmental History at Keele University. Alongside his research on histories of outdoors leisure, landscapes, and environmental understanding, he works with community and art organisations on how derelict, waste or brownfield urban sites might be put to better use. In 2018, he was also a BBC Radio 3/AHRC ‘New Generation Thinker’ - you can look him up on the BBC sounds app. His book, Cities, Mountains and Being Modern in fin-de-siècle England and Germany was published in early 2020.
Dr Ian Waites
Co-Investigator, University of Lincoln
Ian Waites is a senior lecturer in the history of art and design at the University of Lincoln. His research interests centre on the sense of place and community within post-1945 modernist landscapes. He is currently interested in the relationship between post-war planning and the principles of eighteenth-century Picturesque theory, and the use of the 'Radburn Idea' in the design of 1960s and 70s council estates. His most recent publication (with Professor Carenza Lewis) is ‘New light on an old problem: Child-related archæological finds and the impact of the 'Radburn' council estate plan’ (Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2019)
Dr Katrina Navickas
Co-Investigator, University of Hertfordshire
Katrina Navickas is Reader in History at the University of Hertfordshire. From her original research interests in protest, democratic movements and place in 19th century northern England, she has moved onto a much broader project on the history of public space in England from 1700 to 2000, funded by the British Academy. This research includes aspects of planning and environmental history from industrial cities to new towns. Her most recent publication is on the 1950s public inquiries into the Super Grid electricity network (Rural History, 2019).
Prof. Matthew Kelly
Co-Investigator, Northumbria University
Matthew Kelly is Professor of Modern History at Northumbria University. His work on British and Irish history focuses on conservation politics, particularly the history of national parks and environmental activism. Quartz and Feldspar. Dartmoor: A British Landscape in Modern Times was published in 2015 and he is working on a book for Yale University Press about women preservationists in the long twentieth century. His article examining the politics of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 will soon be published in the English Historical Review.