Welcome to OLCAP: The Research Group for Object and Landscape Centred Approaches to the Past!

The group’s core aim is to promote and support research, teaching, and training that falls broadly in the fields of material culture studies and landscape, especially where these relate to the ancient world.

There are three main, related strands of our mission.

Research: The group will provide an inter-departmental and interdisciplinary forum for academic staff and post-graduate students at MA and PhD level whose research relates to material culture and landscape. The scope of research areas will vary but currently includes archaeology, archaeological science, museology, ancient history, and pedagogy. The group not only investigates ideologies surrounding the cultural value and currency of artefacts, the natural and built landscape, but it also engages with established and emerging technologies for understanding their materiality. The geographical and chronological scope of the group’s research interests are broad and ranges from Sudan to Cyprus and from prehistory to the modern-day.

Pedagogy: Excellent research feeds into excellent teaching practice: One of the principle aims of OLCAP is to link research generated by group members to best-practice learning in schools, Higher Education institutions, and in museums. This involves, on the one hand, promoting research-based teaching of objects and landscapes; on the other, it involves conducting research into pedagogical methods of teaching using objects as well as visualising and teaching landscapes.

Training and Employability: Careers in archaeological and historical research require not only theoretical underpinnings, but also a range of competencies to deal practically with different types of material culture and landscapes. Such opportunities are not currently part of either undergraduate or post-graduate teaching and not part of the skill-sets of our students. OLCAP will meet this need by providing free training opportunities for our PGR students in subject-specific core research skills. In addition, regular mini-seminars will provide students with the opportunity to improve presentation and communication skills.

Directors

Dr Ersin Hussein and Dr Christian Knoblauch

Email - olcap@swansea.ac.uk 

College of Arts and Humanities
Swansea University
Singleton Park
Swansea
SA2 8PP

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