People

Dr Alex Buchanan has been at the University of Liverpool since 2007 where she is a Reader in Archive Studies, having previously been archivist at The Clothworkers’ Company and Lambeth Palace Library in London. Alex’s research is situated at the intersection between archives and architectural history: she is interested in how medieval architecture was designed, communicated and recorded and how it has been studied in the post-medieval period. In 2013 Alex published a monograph on the subject of Robert Willis (1800-1875) and the Foundation of Architectural History, a pioneering architectural historian whose work on vaults inspired both her initial interest in him and the present project. Email.

Dr Nick Webb is a Senior Lecturer at the Liverpool School of Architecture. He is researching the application of contemporary digital techniques as a method of analysing historic works of architecture, providing new and enhanced information that would not have been possible in a pre-digital era. These applications are being investigated in relation to designs that were not constructed, buildings that were built and then destroyed as well as buildings that still exist; the application of which can be seen in the Tracing the Past project. Email.

JR Peterson is a technician and photographer in the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures at the University of Liverpool. He focuses on the use of photogrammetry as one method of digitally surveying the vaults, as well as working on the digital laser scanning. JR has also been involved in projects in Turkey using digital scanning techniques, as well as projects using studio photography to document archaeological artefacts.

Zainab Al-Majidi is a PhD student at the Liverpool School of Architecture. She is an assistant lecturer at the University of Basrah and has a background in digital design. Her research focuses on the use of digital tools and applications to investigate heritage buildings, specifically Islamic architecture in Baghdad during the medieval period.

Dr James Hillson is an art historian who studies medieval things, specifically Gothic architecture in northwestern Europe between 1100 and 1400. His research focuses on the international transmission of artistic ideas in England, France, Germany, the Low Countries, Spain and the Baltic, with a particular emphasis on the roles of language, drawing, trade and technical training in communicating architectural forms, concepts and construction methods. James completed his doctoral thesis at the University of York in 2015 on the topic of St Stephen’s Chapel at the Palace of Westminster. In 2016 he was appointed a Research Fellow at Emmanuel College in the University of Cambridge, during which he embarked on a new project on the practical processes behind architectural copying and international artistic exchange in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. From 2018-2021 he was a postdoctoral researcher on the Tracing the Past project, a position funded by our AHRC Early Career Research Grant and the UKRI Covid-19 Grant Extension Allocation.

Dr Sarah Duffy joined the project on a technical basis, bringing a wealth of experience. Sarah previously worked on the ‘Carved in Stone’ project exploring ancient inscriptions at the University of Liverpool, and has experience of photogrammetry, drone and mast surveys, RTI (reflectance transformation imaging) as well as laser scanning. She has previously worked with the Natural History Museum, the British Museum and collaborated with Historic England. Sarah led on preparing our digital data for analysis as well as archiving all information with the Archaeology Data Service, under the AHRC Early Career Research Grant and the UKRI Covid-19 Grant Extension Allocation.

Emma Hobson-White joined the project for a number of weeks in the summer of 2021, under the University of Liverpool’s Graduate Research Internship Scheme. The scheme provides UoL graduates the opportunity to undertake paid research support. Emma’s focus on Tracing the Past was to disseminate the teams’ research and understand how traction to online outputs and work could be improved. Emma was previously a part of the Heritage Related Design Studio at the Liverpool School of Architecture, and has since worked as an Architectural Assistant in the UoL Estates Management team.