Duncan,
Further to Felix's comments about public history, I would draw your
attention to a recent conference hosted at the IHR
entitled: History and the Public (Feb 2006). Recordings of the plenary
sessions can be heard here www.history.ac.uk/public/
This conference drew together academics and museum professionals, as well
as others working at the history/public interface to discuss how the
public engage with history and vice versa. (However some distinctions were
being drawn between academic historical research and the public AND public
history.) Questions related to: who are historians taking to? Policy-
makers, general public, the media; the discipline's TV profile (consider
what Time-Team has done for archaeology, a lost dimension within
geography?); a need for consensus between historians before going public;
historians understanding who they are; resources are locked into academic
disciplines and need to be open to the public - how, not dumbing down but
communicating in creative and engaging ways - dialogue; the practical
application of the subject and not just what people learnt at school -
geography is all about colouring-in!.
I think public geography can also be discussed in relation to the number
of ESRC CASE PhD studentships (and new AHRC ones) awarded to geography
departments and
geographers - and the resultant public geographies. My own work involves a
CASE studentship with the Science Museum.
Hilary Geoghegan
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