Understanding the past is always an act of imagination. In engaging with the past, we seek to recreate in our minds the interior and exterior contexts of past actions, and to convey this understanding to diverse audiences. Yet even within the arts and humanities, scholars who work with the past are often wary of admitting to and interrogating the role of imagination in their own practices – perhaps fearing that such explorations stray too far from the terrain of “respectable” academic research into the realm of counterfactual narratives, historical fiction, or simply unsubstantiated claims about the past. For early career researchers and scholars from marginalised communities, there are perhaps particular risks to engaging with imagination: people insecurely established within academia may feel they have too much to lose by wandering into this uncharted territory, at the expense of colleagues’ esteem.

This participatory workshop hosted on-site at the University of Essex will create safe spaces to explore the role of imagination in researches into the past, combining the elements of playfulness, experimentation, and rigour that are essential to bold thinking. It incorporates the following sessions:

The Creative Writer’s Toolkit – Janet Mathiesen (University of Essex)

Using tools from a creative writer’s toolkit, this interactive workshop will open up new ways of seeing, and understanding, the past. The boundaries between fact and fiction are permeable, and the workshop will consciously draw from the interface between the creative and historical. If we accept that, “A writer is a kind of benevolent cannibal who eats the world…” (Burroway 7), then participants will be encouraged to eat worlds of the past, using their historical knowledge to engage in a selection of creative writing exercises to explore, for instance, setting, character and voice. We will create a space to play, to experiment, and - to paraphrase Flannery O’Connor - to write to see what we say. In small group settings, participants will be encouraged to share their work with the aim of facilitating generative discussion.    

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Creative Research Methods – Kate Mahoney (Healthwatch Essex/University of Essex

As Dawn Mannay writes, in recent years, researchers have fought against the idea that the social sciences is a ‘discipline of words’ where there is no room for pictures. Research participants might not feel able or compelled to share their stories verbally in the form of a qualitative interview, for example. This means that their voices are not heard. Researchers have increasingly utilised creative research methods to enable their participants to share their experiences in a variety of different ways. This workshop will introduce participants to three arts-based creative research methods: collaging, storyboarding, and photovoice. In trying out these approaches, participants will be invited to consider how the methodologies enable them to tell their own stories, with the aim of understanding how they might incorporate them into their own research. 

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Minding the Gaps – Mark Williams (Cardiff University) and Tracey Loughran (University of Essex)

 In this workshop, we will think about how to imaginatively locate ‘silent voices’ in the historical record. Using your own period and topic of interest as a starting point, consider what ‘other sides of the story’ we might hear if our sources were not silent: for instance, the voices of people tried for witchcraft, persecuted on religious grounds, or marginalised through poverty. We ask participants to bring a piece of historical evidence and we will help you to consider how to use this as a springboard for creating a piece of evidence that speaks from the perspective of those usually silenced – this could take many different forms, from ballads and poetry to diary entries or trial testimonials. In exploring the possibilities of creative forms, we will also consider the limitations and potentialities of different kinds of historical evidence, and the responsibilities and freedoms of those who create history and/or historical fiction. 

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How to register

Please contact Tracey Loughran (t.loughran@essex.ac.uk) to register. CHASE-funded students will be awarded priority in booking. Registration closes 12 August.