Dr Morn Capper | University of Chester

Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for Museums Studies and Sustainable Heritage Practice

As Senior Lecturer in Heritage and lead for Museums and Heritage Practice, Morn offers courses and supervises in both Archaeology and History.

Morn worked across the heritage sector in Museums Education at Sheffield Museums and Galleries Trust, contributing to major gallery and exhibitions teams at the British Museum and Birmingham Museums Trust, acting as specialist curatorial advisor to the ‘Staffordshire Hoard’ gallery at Birmingham Museums, 2011-2014. She undertakes curatorial consultancy, heritage research and public engagement work and is keen to develop sustainable heritage partnerships linking universities, museums, professionals, students and communities.

Morn is an active researcher exploring relations of power and identity, past and present. Her research explores the development of Anglo-Saxon Mercia, its lordship and leadership, frontiers, and relations (political, cultural, social and economic). Her interdisciplinary Heritage research analyses how archaeological discoveries and relics are preserved and impact on modern people, places and communities via heritage preservation.

Morn is passionate about research projects and outreach promoting sustainable heritage management, community engagement, learning and volunteering, most recently:

• Female Medieval leadership: Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians: travelling exhibition, public conference, book and gallery contribution at Tamworth Castle Museum, with the Universities of Tamworth and Keele.

• Shrewsbury Castle Project excavation and preservation with Dr Nigel Baker, funded by Castle Studies Trust

• Churches Conservation Trust: St Mary’s Church Shrewsbury: Stained Glass Conservation Project: site research and steering group.

•She also contributed to Leverhulme funded ‘Impact of Diasporas on the Making of Britain’, led by Prof. Jo Story: a cross-disciplinary analysis exploring migration and identity through the movement of objects and DNA in the first Millennium and modern impacts.

I am interested by the interactions between regions and between Anglo-Saxon, British and Irish identities and frontiers in Early Medieval Britain. I am also investigating how heritage contributes to modern identity in Britain.

I am also fascinated by the tensions in museums and heritage practice, particularly how Museums and Cultural Heritage, and their sustainable and ethical preservation, can contribute to community knowledge, equality, environment and wellbeing.

My recent research has explored the role of metalwork in forging communities and identities in the midlands and how this intersects with the evidence of other sources, written and archaeological records and portable antiquities. The seventh century was a critical time in kingdom formation, the conversion to Christianity and the making of English identity. This research brings together objects from across the region to examine how disparate kingdoms came to embrace common markers of ‘English’ political and religious identity and where and to what extent they came to exclude the traditions of others.

With Diaspora's colleague Marc Scully I have been exploring the impact of archaeological discoveries such as the Staffordshire Hoard on perceptions of the Anglo-Saxon past in the midlands. This study works in collaboration with the Staffordshire Hoard Mercian Trail and in partnership with The New Vic Theatre, Stoke on Trent in support of their 'Hoard' festival of plays.

I am also presently engaged in several public research and engagement projects around Medieval heritage sites, their research, sustainable preservation and interpretation. Most recently explorations include the Staffordshire Hoard, Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, Shrewsbury Castle, St Mary's Church and church collections. I am also a member of Offa's Dyke Collaboratory

Areas of MRes and MPhil/PhD Supervision interest

• Museum Studies / Museums Practice / Collections Management and Research (all areas, including ethics, preservation and sustainability)

• Analysis of Historic buildings, sites and collections (whether monuments, statues, churches, castles, Historic Houses, buildings, prisons, Military Museums)

• Sustainability, inclusion, digitalisation, communities, identities, decolonisation, education and outreach, heritage crime, wellbeing as approaches to specific Collections, Museums, Historic townscapes, Heritage Sites or Portable Antiquities, practice, strategy and policy.

• Early Medieval Mercia and its successors, its ideologies, institutions, borderlands, neighbours, economy and interactions (400-1200)

• 'Anglo-Saxon' kingdoms and societies: leadership, ideology, military and gender roles, heritage and re-enactment

• Women war leaders (any before 1600)

• Medieval collections, buildings, portable antiquities and tangible/intangible/digital heritage in relation to Modern identities, specialisms and networks (from Wales, the Midlands and Marches to International and UNESCO/ World Heritage)