New Treatied Spaces

Historic Houses, Global Crossroads: PI, Joy Porter. Co-I, Olwen Purdue

A new collaborative project in development seeking to link two U.K. historic houses and unlock the visitor and research potential of their Indigenous, Asian, Arctic & Library material culture. Associated Collaborative Doctoral Award.

Historic properties and their environs face acute challenges from climate change and a diversity deficit linked to the perception they embody only empire and exploitation. Without diminishing these histories, HHGC will reveal how historic sites can beneficially position themselves in a new way, as global crossroads, entangled intersections of diplomatic, material and intercultural exchange where conceptualisation of the international took place. Our aim is to re-position historic sites within ‘international society’ (Manela, 2020),setting aside both methodological nationalism and a conventional family-owner focus. Instead, we will foreground global inter connections between people, environments, material culture, and ideas.

Our research will concentrate on two of Northern Ireland’s most globally significant yet under-analysed heritage sites – Clandeboye Estate, containing exceptional extensive unstudied archives and material culture, and Mount Stewart, amongst the National Trust’s most interculturally rich spaces. We will address the urgent social challenge of ensuring they serve as transformative sites of inclusion, rather than division. This work has vital significance in the contested political context of Northern Ireland where historic houses are embedded in a long history of empire, internal colonialism and sectarian division. We will deepen and profoundly broaden understanding of both sites, revealing for the first time the textured flows of global interconnection they embody.