University of Leicester / Oxfordshire History Centre Collaboration

In April, the University of Leicester BA in Humanities and Arts Year 1 European Architecture students visited the Oxfordshire History Centre. The event was organised in collaboration with Hannah Jones (Archivist), who kindly produced a display of material relating to religious buildings in Oxfordshire (eg photographs, churchwardens' accounts), and provided an introduction to the archives and to undertaking research at an undergraduate level.

The BA in Humanities and Arts is a part-time course run by the Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Leicester. Students attend a 4-day study school at the University of Oxford (Worcester College), and as part of the Year 1 European Architecture module, examine key buildings in situ (for instance the Radcliffe Camera, Blenheim Palace, the Bodleian Library and All Souls College).

This month, we delivered a paper on the University of Leicester / Oxfordshire History Centre collaboration session at the Religious Archives Group conference at Pusey House, Oxford. Delegates were particularly interested in how 'religious' archives in a local authority (rather than specifically religious) collection could be utilisted by non-traditional audiences - namely undergraduates and those with no previous experience of archive research.