DePOT is pleased to welcome another new co-applicant and partner organization to our team: Dr. Hilary Orange and the Centre for Heritage Research and Training (CHART) at Swansea University.
CHART brings people together to consider the links between cultural heritage and urban regeneration, economic development, place-making, and well-being. With projects ranging from global cultural protection to the Welsh steel industry, and the regeneration of the Hafod Morfa Copperworks, our research is globally situated, but our environment is directly shaped by the needs of the communities in which we are rooted. In a region profoundly affected by de-industrialization, by political devolution and Welsh cultural identity, we take seriously the need to work in partnership with private, public, and third-sector organisations. CHART is also committed to mentoring emerging heritage scholars and practitioners. Swansea provides a stimulating research environment for scholars at all career stages, who can work within the varied landscapes, archives, and museums on our doorstep.
Hilary Orange is Senior Lecturer in Industrial Heritage at Swansea University, Wales and Chair of the Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory Group (CHAT). Her research interests focus on industrial heritage and contemporary archaeology. For DePOT, Hilary is contributing to the thematic research initiatives on “The Politics of Industrial Heritage” and “Working-Class Expression.”
Hilary’s most recent publications include a chapter on rock and pop shrines in London (with Paul Graves-Brown), published in Music and Heritage: New Perspectives on Place-making and Sonic Identity (2021), the co-edited volume The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place (2019, with Sarah de Nardi, Steven High and Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto), an article on artificial light, daycentrism and contemporary archaeology in the journal Post-Medieval Archaeology (2018), and an essay in the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology (2017) on industrial tourism in Japan. From 2016-18, Hilary worked as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow, based at the Institut für soziale Bewegungen, Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany and she is currently publishing her research on light art, industry, and regional identity in the Ruhrgebiet. Concomitantly, Hilary is working on a Swansea University project Social Worlds of Steel examining the social impact of the steel industry on south Wales communities (with PI Louise Miskell).
