Archive; Space; Identity; Chatsworth

Lucy will be working on the second project, 'Archive as Practice, Space and Identity at Chatsworth'. Her research will be multidisciplinary in its scope, focusing primarily on:
- How and why the Archive at Chatsworth came to be the curated repository that it is today, interrogating how the collecting and record-making practices of the past can inform our present understanding of the hierarchies, legacies and silences contained within its collections;
- How we might conceive of the Archive's physicality, its materialities and its emergence as a professionally-maintained space in relation to its physical location in the old Servants' Quarters - particularly concerning the class & labour dynamics at play;
- How current and former staff, volunteers, visitors and family members interpret and navigate their place in the Archive, and how they locate memory and history within the North Wing in particular - this will involve undertaking oral history research, conceptualising the country house of the future, and the Archive's place within this vision;
- Finally, how the Archive might be instrumental in engaging contemporary and future audiences with the stories and collections at Chatsworth, as well as examining how the Archive continues to develop in the present.