Margaret Morris dancers posing with tree

We are very pleased to announce that a new project archivist, Elaine MacGillivray, has agreed to take on responsibility for our collaborative Wellcome Research Resource-funded archives project ‘Body Language: movement, dance and physical education in Scotland, 1890-1990’.  Elaine currently manages another Wellcome Research Resource-funded ‘Evergreen: Patrick Geddes and the Environment in Equilibrium’.  With immediate effect, Elaine will split her time 50/50 between the two projects, which means that she will (usually) work Tues-Wed on our Body Language project and Thurs-Fri on the Evergreen Project.  This means that the Body Language project will now extend to July 2020.

The extended project period provides a wonderful opportunity to continue the cataloguing work, explore and highlight the collections further and to open up research opportunities using the collections.

Elaine’s predecessor, Clare Button, has successfully completed a significant amount of work on the project.  We are very grateful for the huge contribution that Clare made to the project and wish her all the very best in her new post as archivist at the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, at Queen Mary University, London.

“Clare has undertaken a tremendous amount of work on the project to date and I very much hope that I can fulfil her ambitions for the project as I take her work forward.  I am also very excited to explore the commonalities between the two projects.  Firstly in terms of the ideas relating to movement, health, art and culture, but also in relation to the people found in the collections material.  I know Margaret Morris visited Patrick Geddes’ Château d’Assas, near Montpellier, at least once, and that they were both connected with Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.” Elaine MacGillivray, project archivist.

Watch this space for the next update!