Written by: Rebekah Day, RESP Curatorial Intern

From December 2023 to May 2024, I have had the pleasure of working on curating an online exhibition for the Regional Ethnology of Scotland Project (RESP).

View the exhibition: www.exhibitions.ed.ac.uk/exhibitions/animal-encounters

After successfully interviewing for the Regional Ethnology of Scotland (RESP) curatorial internship, I was given information from the Project team on a whole range of topics and themes that could be used as a basis for the exhibition but was assured that I had the choice to pitch my own idea. After some back and forth discussions about what kind of content and topics I was likely to find in the RESP interviews, I started to listen to some of the recordings available on the website and found myself drawn to the stories people shared that included interactions with animals.

I pitched the idea of my theme being ‘Animal Encounters’ giving the following rationale:

It can be said that the RESP archive, and ethnology more widely, is concerned with studying and recording the everyday stories of people – but ostensibly they also capture the nuances of the universally shared, yet deeply individual, human experience.

A surprising theme that reoccurs throughout the interviews is the significance of animals, which appear in a huge variety of the memories and stories individuals have shared with the RESP archive.

The rural locations where many interviews have been carried out naturally mean that individuals have shared connections to agricultural activity such as farming, so it is no surprise that stories of animals framed by this industry occur – what is interesting though, is just how many spheres of influence animals crop up in throughout a person’s life.

Some of these stories recount the chores involved raising farm animals, the joy of playing with a beloved family pet, the intensive labour involved in abattoir work, the impact of poaching and cattle theft on communities, or lamenting the loss of fields used for grazing now given over to modern housing estates.

By selecting the specific subject of ‘animals’, this exhibition will provide a window into the RESP archives – encouraging audiences to delve more deeply into the RESP website and other CRC collections for their own research.

This exhibition will also provide a timely and entertaining resource for students and those interested in local history, encouraging discussion about the changing relationship between Scotland’s people and the natural environment.

Given the go ahead, I was then trained in how to use the exhibitions website so I could see what kind of content could be displayed and what layout was possible. I was also guided on what external organisations and volunteers associated with RESP I could approach to ask for visual content such as photographs and videos.

Caroline Milligan also provided me with an extensive list of interviews

that she knew mentioned animals – you can see the whole list here. When first listening to these, I wanted to stop and write down the time stamp for every little anecdote I thought was interesting, but this would have taken forever!

Instead I listened to a couple of them the whole-way through the first time around with my digital drawing tablet set up. I soon found that just doodling away while listening to the interviews clarified that the topics and themes I was clearly drawn to involved animals and nature.

Going back to make notes of relevant stories from some of these interviews and thinking about the kind of illustrations I was producing, and the other visual content RESP had access to, I was able to suggest three ‘categories’ that the content could be placed in, to provide a framework for the exhibition.
The three categories ‘for us,’ ‘with us’, ‘around us,’ are not intended as concrete descriptions, but as loose themes that can frame or challenge your interpretation of the kind of interactions between people and animals that can be found in the exhibition.

I found reference images on the internet to ensure I was getting things like the colours, details and proportions somewhat right for these illustrations. Some interviews discussed populations of pheasants, kites and lapwings which I guessed were birds, but only thanks to a Google search could I confidently replicate what they looked like!
This exercise in itself was eye opening – searching out further details from the fleeting comments made within an interview gave me such a greater appreciation for the topics people were discussing.
For example, discovering that lapwings, also known as ‘peewits’, had adorable pointy head-feathers and nested on the ground, helped me imagine how these creatures would have stood out to a person gazing across the landscape.
I could imagine the parent birds watching over their cute fluffy chicks, but also worrying as farm machinery and road traffic milled by dangerously close to their nests.

I was really inspired by how a previous intern for the Friends Exhibition used their own illustrations throughout the exhibition; her scrapbook-style collages neatly frame the pages and provide a visual connection between collection items that might have otherwise felt disparate. The illustrations in the Friends Exhibition enhance the viewers experience while navigating the website, but do not draw any focus away from the key material on display. This was a method I hoped to replicate by including my own drawings in the Animal Encounters exhibition.
To give the idea that my illustrations were visual components of a larger, multi-media, exhibition, I placed the individual illustrations in a variety of mismatching frames. This created a kind of jigsaw or collage to use on the homepage and in marketing material.

For each sub-page, I then took a smaller group of framed illustrations that felt relevant to the interviews and used these as header images.

Where I included audio clips from the interviews I tried to accompany these with images of the individual speaking or photographs from the location the interviewee came from. Where I could not find a relevant image, I instead took a quote from the interview transcription and placed it in a frame alongside some relevant illustrations.
I felt this helped keep the content engaging and created continuity between different sections.

In the Friends Exhibition, the intern included a short recording of the Curator speaking about an item in the collection which inspired me to include a piece of my own connection to the themes explored in the Animal Encounters exhibition through a short interview with the RESP Project Archivist Lesley Bryson.
I had been eager to include mention of a connection we had discovered over the months since I started this internship. Through chatting about family history we realised that the area of Morningside where Lesley lives today is right by the location of the historic dairy my husband’s great-great-grandparents had lived and worked in the early 1900s.
I was recently sent some of these family photos and showed Lesley, who enjoyed seeing how different the street had looked in the past. She also told me that recent building works at her house had uncovered cow bones, possibly evidence of the historic dairy.

This interaction is the last story included in the exhibition as I feel that it surmises for me just how pervasive the connections between humans and animals remain across the decades.

View the exhibition: www.exhibitions.ed.ac.uk/exhibitions/animal-encounters

Hello again!

This is my final week on the One Health project, in which I’ve undertaken research and academic engagement – it’s been a fascinating and exciting project to contribute to, with a fantastic team. I thought I’d provide a quick recap of what’s been done and what the future might hold in terms of engagement with the collections, as well as what I’ve learned from this experience.

Image of Our Fellow Mortals Magazine, volume number 6, February 1913, SSPV

What’s been done in the research space?

• mapping of research topics across the collections – there is so much to continue to explore!
• writing research articles – bacterial infections and how animal welfare was implicated in related public health issues across all three collections (submitted to the British Journal for the History of Science), and women and the politics of care, exploring the OneKind and Royal Zoological Society of Scotland archives (about to be submitted to the Journal of Women in Culture and Society!)
• writing up of possible follow on grant for the Wellcome Trust
• lots of engagement with academics internally and externally (see previous blog post!)

The future?

As I’ve said before, these collections provide a wealth of material for researchers, across different disciplines, and I hope those reading this blog post consider engaging with them! If you would like to view items you can book a time in the reading room:

Visiting in Person | The University of Edinburgh

You can peruse the Dick Vet and OneKind archives here:

Collection: Records of the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College | University of Edinburgh Archive and Manuscript Collections

Collection: Records of OneKind animal welfare charity | University of Edinburgh Archive and Manuscript Collections

The RZSS archive will be catalogued over the next year, an exciting follow on project. The future will no doubt include the realisation of multiple projects based on the archival materials, potentially around changing conceptions of cruelty since the early 1900s, exploration of conceptions of wellbeing benefits of interactions with animals and nature in the early to mid-1900s in Scotland, profiling various prominent women who appear in the archival materials to ensure their place in historical research/record, and much more!

What have I learned?

Archival research is a vastly rewarding journey of discovery. At first I felt quite overwhelmed by the amount of items in each archive and wondered how I would be able to digest it all – in the end I couldn’t look at everything in detail, instead becoming selective, in order to complete the two short research projects. But there is much I would still love to see within the collections! I also realised that finding out more about the lives of individuals named in annual reports and magazines (for example) takes much longer than you might anticipate, since some of the women in particular were relatively obscure (although they shouldn’t be!) – hunting for hours turned up almost nothing!

Finally, I learned so much about the actual process of doing archival research, huge thanks to the project archivist and lead, Fiona Menzies, and Amanda Dodd in conservation. I also found out that Fiona makes great cakes, for instance this vegan one of Our Fellow Mortals magazine (genius!), devoured in the kitchen today as we wind down the project:

Cake of Our Fellow Mortals magazine!

To introduce you to the methods used to handle various items, please watch this video:

The University of Edinburgh – Guide to Handling Collections Material (youtube.com)

Do contact CRC for more information and access: Centre for Research Collections | The University of Edinburgh

While I am leaving the One Health project, I’m still very happy to engage with anyone to share insights regarding what’s in the collections, so don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Elizabeth

My role in the Wellcome Trust One Health archival project has involved identifying research topics that can be found in archival records, undertaking research AND academic engagement.  

We have developed some very fruitful connections internally with Health in Social Science through my work with Alette Willis as well as Dick Vet academics and members of the Environmental Humanities Network. 

Some animal studies groups externally have shown keen interest in the One Health archival collections as well, such as Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre (ShARC) at the University of Sheffield and the British Animal Studies Network (BASN) at Strathclyde University.  

There are a few other animal studies networks in the UK that relate to the One Health project: 

• University of Manchester, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) 
• University of Kent, Animal Humanities Network 
• University of Exeter, Anthrozoology group 

 Thanks to those centres and networks we’ve engaged with so far! 

Looking for ways to look after yourself during your studies and exams? The Library’s new Wellbeing Collection provides resources on all aspects of wellbeing, including but not limited to anxiety, exercise, general wellbeing, happiness, relationships, sleeping well and University life.

The collection of books and e-books is available to borrow for all students and staff. In this blog post we highlight just a few of the e-books available in the collection.

You can explore all the books in the Wellbeing Collection in DiscoverEd or browse a list of books by subject area in the resource list.

To launch our new collection we have a display of Wellbeing Collection books in the Main Library (30 George Square) which is in place until the end of May 2024. In the two weeks since the display was put in place 66 items have already been borrowed!

Wellbeing Collection books on display in the Main Library

What does the Wellbeing Collection cover?

Here we highlight some example e-books from the collection on a few different themes that you might wish to explore:

University life

It’s normal to feel nervous before an exam or overwhelmed with your workload sometimes, but it’s important not to let anxiety or stress have a negative impact on your performance.

• You’ve Got This : A Student’s Guide to Well-being at University and Beyond
• Stay Happy While You Study: Make the most of your student experience

Building good habits

If you have a tendency to procrastinate instead of revising, or want to develop healthy habits in your life, the collection has books to help.

• Procrastination : How to Do It Well
• How to be a productivity ninja : worry less, achieve more, love what you do 

Sleep and rest

It’s important to look after yourself at stressful times, and that includes getting plenty of sleep and rest.

• Insomnia: A Guide to, and Consolation for, the Restless Early Hours 
• Nothing Much Happens: Calming stories to soothe your mind and help you sleep

Getting more exercise

Keeping active can boost your mood as well as your physical health.

• Mind & Body : Mental Exercises for Physical Wellbeing; Physical Exercises for Mental Wellbeing 
• A Philosophy of Walking 

Why not pair your reading with a spot of rock climbing or yoga – Sport & Exercise have a whole range of activity running in April and May, from bootcamps to Yoga, from Learn to lift workshops to weekend courses at Firbush, and free gym entry for students and staff next week.

Exploring nature

Exposure to nature has been shown to have a positive impact on physical health and cognitive function. Spring has sprung in Edinburgh, so now’s the perfect time to get out into nature.

• The Natural Health Service: How Nature Can Mend Your Mind
• Gardening for mind, body and soul : how to nurture your well-being with nature

You can read more about using the Library for wellbeing and leisure on our subject guide.

The Wellbeing Collection is managed by a team including Library staff, University Student Wellbeing Advisers and the EUSA Student Opportunities Representative (Wellbeing).

If you are an Edinburgh student and you need to talk to someone there’s lots of help and guidance available from the Student Health and Wellbeing Services, and staff can access support through the Staff Health and Wellbeing Hub.

This week, I’m presenting viable research topics that span at least two of the archival collections and could be developed into projects in the One Health space. Here’s a list of what I’ve found (during the course of about 2.5 months, so it’s not exhaustive!): 

I introduce some of these in more detail, to give you a better idea of what you can find in the archives, please watch this video clip!

Watch the full version on Media Hopper.

Next week, focus on academic engagement!

We are delighted to welcome three new people to the Conservation and Collections Management Team this month. Abigail Miskin, Ella Joyce and Isabela Tapia Hernandez will be joining us as our first ever Student Collections Care Assistants.

Ella, Abigail and Isabela will be working with us until the end of July on a range of different projects and activities. Let’s hear them introduce themselves in their own words:

Read More →