LAURA GRANDA MATEU

I am a current PhD History research student and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the History, Geography, and Social Sciences department at Edge Hill University.
I completed a History Licenciatura at the Complutense University of Madrid, a Master’s in Education at Valencian International University, and a Master’s in Heritage & Interpretation at the University of Leicester.

My current research project focuses on the long nineteenth century, exploring how women engaged with collecting practices – including natural specimens, botanical and ephemera collections – and their influence within the intellectual and artistic circles of their time through various roles, in particular as knowledge-makers, mediators and popularisers. I also examine women who bequeathed their family collections to regional and national institutions open to the public (such as museums, local archives, universities, and historic houses), and their broader impact and legacy as benefactors to these public cultural spaces and to the material culture we use, interpret and enjoy today.

This interdisciplinary project is supervised by Bob Nicholson (History), Andrew McInnes (English Literature) and Melissa Gustin (Curator of British Art at the Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool).

Prior to joining EHU as a PhD/GTA, I worked at the same university as an Associate Tutor in the Languages Department, teaching Spanish and French modules to undergraduate students (Levels 4, 5, 6) as well as evening courses for staff and the wider community.

Currently, as a GTA, the seminar modules I teach/provide assistance with are: 

I specialise in social history, visual and material culture, and women’s production (as writers, artists, crafters and collectors).

My main interests are the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and Britain, as well as the Early Modern Period in Europe —particularly in terms of women’s influence (as patrons, collectors, and Women Religious) and their creative output. I am passionate about the use of material culture to research history, particularly through the analysis of fashion, textiles, and domestic objects.

In my previous studies, I have focused on the analysis of cultural heritage from different perspectives; for instance, exploring how we interpret and present our historic sites and museums to the public; the ways we incorporate heritage into current conversations and debates; and the use of particular objects and/or materials to build historical narratives. In my master’s studies, for my final dissertation, I had the opportunity to explore how contemporary visual culture (in particular film and TV) can inform our understanding of material culture from the past, focusing on the use of historical costume on screen as a key interpretative tool.

As a researcher, I want to defend the importance of building historical narratives that look beyond the big events narrated in the Annals. I am academically — and personally — interested in the significance of the small and ephemeral details, in the domesticity of the everyday, and in women’s material literacy and lives that, unless they were the exception, often occupy the footnotes or are scarcely found in the records.