Christopher Williams

I graduated from the University of Hull in 2020 with a First Class degree in History. Since then, my aspirations have been to work in local government, and I recently secured a position with my local council as a National Management Trainee through the National Graduate Development Programme.

Currently, I am working as part of the Treatied Spaces research group, working alongside Dr Charles Prior and Matthias Wong on a Mapping Project to produce a digital map of northeastern North America using entirely indigenous place names.

I strongly believe history needs to be told from unheard perspectives, particularly where this relates to issues of colonialism and indigenous voices. As a research support intern, my work has been to help isolate best practice for producing an online citizen science project, understand how such projects have been done in the past, and bring that knowledge to bear while producing our own.

This involves in-depth research, producing reports for others, and writing for the public. I think that this project will provide an invaluable tool for accessing Indigenous perspectives on the North American landscape, and I am absolutely delighted to play a part in making it a reality. I hope that the skills I learn here will help me bring a similar kind of understanding to my work in the future, especially as local government shifts towards community-oriented planning and digital projects.