Professor Daniel Maudlin
Profiles

Professor Daniel Maudlin

Professor

School of Society and Culture (Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business)

Biography

Biography

I am a historian of space, place and material culture within the British Empire, 1600 - 1850. My current work on inns examines colonial identity, power and the impact of imposed spaces on place. I am particularly interested in the experience of built space as part of the process of imperial place-making, both the material, haptic qualities of immersive space and the ability of design to communicate complex associative meanings as differentiated by rank, gender and race.

I am programme leader for MA Heritage Theory and Practice - http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/ma-heritage-theory-and-practice - and director of the University of Plymouth's heritage partnership unit, Plymouth Heritage Praxis, where I oversee a portfolio of projects focused on grant-funded partnerships with the museums and heritage sector. Current partners include the National Trust, Historic England, Dartmoor National Park, The Box and Powderham Castle: http://www.plymouthheritagepraxis.org.

Following both my undergraduate degree (Art History, First Class) and PhD at the University of St Andrews, I first worked in the museums and heritage sector as an Inspector of Historic Buildings for Historic Environment Scotland as well as positions with the Victoria and Albert Museum, Scottish National Galleries and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. I later moved into academia when I was awarded a Leverhulme postdoctoral fellowship to study at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada (for a project on the homes of early Scottish migrants in Canada), taking up the post of Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Art and Design, Department of Art History at the University of Plymouth in 2005.

Recent highlights include: 

  • Elected to the Council of the European Architectural History Network, 2021 - 
  • Invited by OUP to write the book on Eighteenth-Century Architecture for the landmark Oxford History of Art Series (due out in 2022).
  • Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship, 2014 - 2017.....the book, The Good Inn: Everyday Spaces and the Experience of Empire, is due out this year (OUP, 2021). 
  • Allen G. Noble Book Prize (2016) awarded by the International Society for Landscape, Place and Material Culture for the ground-breaking collection Building the British Atlantic World (UNC Press, 2016), later included in the reader, Art and its Global Histories (MUP, 2017).
  • DCMS funding, 2021 - 22, for eight PG studentships investigating cultural diversity and social barriers to access at historic sites in partnership with Dartmoor National Park, The Box and Powderham Caslte
    Current projects:
    Inner Empire: Architecture and Empire in the British Isles, 1600 to the present (Studies in Imperialism) (Manchester University Press, in-press 2021
    Projects in development:

    The Routledge Companion to History, Space and Place (in development with Routledge)

Living under the British: dwellings, empire and the global transformation of place (AHRC grant in preparation)

Assembly: social gatherings, gathering spaces and the maintenance of the British Empire (new monograph in preparation)

Health benefits of the remote digital experience of historic spaces (ESCR collaborative grant in preparation in partnership with Dartmoor National Park and the Peninsula Medical School)


Qualifications

PhD, 'The Planned Villages of the British Fisheries Society, 1780 - 1820', History of Art, University of St Andrews (British Academy Studentship), 1998 – 2002

 MPhil, History of Art, University of St Andrews, 1997 – 8

 MA Hons (First Class), History of Art, University of St Andrews, 1992 – 6

 

Academic Positions

Visiting Professor, Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Guelph, 2021 – 23

Director, Plymouth Heritage Praxis, 2017 -

John D. Rockefeller Fellow, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Colonial Williamsburg, 2016

Visiting Professor, Penn Design, University of Pennsylvania, 2015 - 17

Visiting Professor, Department of American Studies, University of North Carolina, 2014 – 16

Professor of Architectural History and Theory, Department of History and Art History, University of Plymouth, 2014 –

Associate Head of School (Research), Associate Professor/Professor, School of Architecture and Design, University of Plymouth, 2008 – 14

Lecturer, Department of Art History, University of Plymouth, 2005 – 8

Associate Professor, Department of History, Dalhousie University, Canada, 2002 – 5

Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Art History, University of Glasgow, 2002 - 5

Inspector of Historic Buildings, Historic Scotland, Edinburgh, 2000 – 2002

Intern, National Galleries of Scotland, 1998

Tom Ingram Memorial Fellow, Victorian and Albert Museum - Royal Malay Museums, 1997

Curatorial Program Intern, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1996

Intern, Survey of London, English Heritage, London, 1995


Professional membership

British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

British Society for Early American History

European Architectural History Network

The Georgian Group

International Society for Landscape, Place and Material Culture

International Association for Study of Traditional Environments

Society of Antiquaries (Fellow)

 

Roles on external bodies

Executive Council, European Architectural History Network, 2020 -

Editorial Board, Journal of Built Heritage, 2019 -

AHRC Peer Review College: Design, Heritage, History, 2016 - 20

Trustee, Paul Oliver Vernacular Architecture Trust, 2015 -

Judging Panel, Colonial History Prize, Society of Architectural Historians, 2013 – 16

Editorial Board (founding board member), Architectural Histories, European Architectural History Network, 2012 - 14

Editorial Board, Vernacular Architecture, Vernacular Architecture Group, 2010 -

International Advisory Committee, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments, 2009 –

Advisory Group, World Monuments Fund, 2007 -



Teaching

Teaching

Teaching interests

Programme Leader     MA Heritage Theory and Practice, 2020 –

                     MA History, 2012 – 14

                     MA Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2006 – 12

Module Leader         BA History: ‘History and Heritage’ (Year 1 core module), 2017 -

                              ‘History and Heritage: Legacies of Empire’ (Year 2 option), 2017 -

                               ‘The British Atlantic World’ (Year 3 option), 2017 -

BA Architecture: Cultural Contexts Stream Leader (Years 1 – 3), 2008 – 14

 

PhD supervision:

I have successfully supervised a range of PhD students within the fields of architectural history and theory, material culture and heritage ranging from prison graffiti in Malaysia, to female agency in the British country house, Marie Antoinette’s hameaux at Petit Trianon and the heritage space of rivers.


Staff serving as external examiners

Courtauld Institute, University of London

Department of History, University of Newcastle

Department of History, University College Dublin

School of Architecture, University of Cardiff

School of Architecture, University of Sheffield

School of Architecture, KU Leuven

Research

Research

Research interests

My research is concerned with space, place and material culture within the British Empire, 1600 - 1850. My current focus is on identity, power and the imposition and impact of designed spaces on people, place and the process of place-making (and place changing). I am also interested in the experience of space - both the material, haptic qualities of immersive spaces and the ability of design to communicate complex associative meanings - as differentiated by rank, gender and race.

Research groups

Grants & contracts

2021 -         A la Ronde, National Trust, National Lottery Heritage Fund (£800,000 collaborative partnership bid, outcome pending)

2021- 22       iMayflower Digital Heritage Partnerships with Dartmoor National Park, The Box and Powderham Castle, Cultural Development Fund,               Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (£40,000)

2020 – 22      National Lottery Heritage Fund: LGBT Narratives: Heritage in Safe Spaces (£38,000)

2019-20       Plymouth Heritage Praxis, Higher Education Industrial Fund (£50,000)

2018 – 20      Tavistock Heritage Trust, Cornish Mining World Heritage Gateway Centre, National Lottery Heritage Fund (£1.65 million partnership                 funding)

2018 - 19      Plymouth City Heritage Trails, National Mayflower Partnership, Plymouth City Council and Untitled Practice Architects (£1.5 million                  partnership funding)

2018 - 19      Rame Peninsula Heritage Gateway, National Lottery Heritage Fund (£248,000)

2014 – 17     Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship: The Inn and the Traveller in the Atlantic World (£138,526)

2011-12       AHRC Mid-Career Fellowship: The Invention of the English House (£36,124)                              

2009-11       AHRC Research Network Grant: Transatlantic Exchanges (£30,000)                                      

2009          US Embassy Cultural Awards, Transatlantic Exchanges (£3500)

2009          Scotland Inheritance Fund: The Highland House Transformed (£2000)

2007 – 9       Mount Edgcumbe Country Park, Cornwall County Council, University of Pennsylvania, Kress Foundation (£20,000)

2005 – 7       Strawberry Hill Trust, University of Pennsylvania, Kress Foundation (£20,000)

2002 – 5       Leverhulme Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (£76,000)


Publications

Publications

Journals

D. Maudlin, ‘At the Sign of the Black Boy: Inns and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Britain and British America’, Social and Cultural History (preparing to submit 2021)

D. Maudlin, ‘Inns and Elite Mobility in Late Georgian Britain’, Past and Present, Vol. 247, May 2020, 34-76.

D. Maudlin, 'The Urban Inn: gathering space, hierarchy and material culture in the eighteenth-century British town’, Urban History, Vol. 46 (2019), 1 - 32.

D. Maudlin, 'History, Heritage and the Inn in the British Atlantic World', 'The Hotel in History: Evolving Perspectives', Journal of Heritage Tourism, Vol. 8 (2017), 1-20.

D. Maudlin, 'A Narrow View of Nature: the world as experienced through early modern travel maps', Picturing Places, British Library (BL Online, 2017).

D. Maudlin, ‘Crossing Boundaries: Revisiting Some Thresholds of the Vernacular’, Vernacular Architecture, 41 (2010), 10-14.

D. Maudlin, ‘Habitations of the Labourer: Improvement, Reform and the Neoclassical Cottage in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, Design History, 23 (2010), 7-23.

D. Maudlin, ‘Constructing Tradition and Identity: Englishness, Politics and the Neo-Traditional House’, Journal of Architectural Education, 61:3 (2009), 51-63

D. Maudlin, ‘The Legend of Brigadoon: Architecture, Identity and Choice in the Scottish Highlands’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 20:2 (2009), 45-57.

D. Maudlin, ‘Modern Homes for Modern People: Identifying and Interpreting the Highland Building Boom’, Vernacular Architecture, 39 (2008), 1-18.

D. Maudlin, 'Architecture and Identity on the Edge of Empire: Domestic Architecture of Scottish Settlers in Nova Scotia’, Architectural History, 50 (2007), 95-123.

D. Maudlin, 'Thomas Telford, Robert Mylne and the Architecture of Improvement: The Planned Villages of the British Fisheries Society, 1786 - 1820', Urban History, 34:3 (2007), 453-480.

D. Maudlin, ‘Regulating the Vernacular: The Impact of Building Regulations in the Eighteenth-Century Highland Planned Village’, Vernacular Architecture, 34 (2003), 40-9.

D. Maudlin, ‘Tradition and Change in the Age of Improvement: A Study of the Dukes of Argyll Tacksmens’ Houses’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 133 (2003), 359-74.

D. Maudlin, ‘Robert Mylne at Pitlour House’, Architectural Heritage, XII (2001), 27-37.

D. Maudlin, ‘Highland Planned Villages and the British Fisheries Society’, The New Town Phenomenon, Studies in History of Scottish Architecture and Design, IV (2000), 41-50.

D. Maudlin, ‘How to Make a Borders Box Bed’, Regional Furniture, XIV (2000), 1-3.

D. Maudlin, 'Anglo-Malay Furniture ', Regional Furniture, XIII (1999), 112-6.

Books

D. Maudlin (ed.), The Routledge Companion to History, Space and Place (forthcoming).

D. Maudlin, The Good Inn: Everyday Spaces and the Experience of Empire, 1600 - 1850 (Oxford University Press, in press 2021).

D. Maudlin, Eighteenth-Century Architecture (Oxford University Press, in press 2022).

G. A. Bremner and D. Maudlin (eds.), Inner Empire: Architecture and Imperialism in the British Isles (Studies in Imperialism) (Manchester University Press, in press 2021).

D. Maudlin and B. L. Herman (eds.), Building the British Atlantic World: Spaces, Places, and Material Culture 1600 -1850 (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2016).

D. Maudlin, The Idea of the Cottage in English Architecture, 1760 – 1860 (Routledge, 2015; paperback ed. 2018).

D. Maudlin and M. Vellinga (eds.), Consuming Architecture: On the Occupation, Appropriation and Interpretation of Buildings (Routledge, 2014).

 D. Maudlin and R. Peel (eds.), Traffic and (Mis)Translations: Transatlantic Exchanges between Britain and New England (University of New England Press, 2013).

 D. Maudlin and R. Peel (eds.), The Materials of Exchange Between Britain and North East America, 1750-1900 (Routledge, 2013).

D. Maudlin, The Highland House Transformed: Architecture and Identity on the Edge of Britain, 1700 – 1850 (Dundee University Press, 2009; OUP North America, 2014).

Chapters

D. Maudlin and B. L. Herman, 'Building the British Atlantic World', in D. Newall (ed.), Art and its Global Histories: A Reader (Manchester University Press, 2017), pp. 161-71.

D. Maudlin, ‘Early Colonial Architectures', in G. A. Bremner (ed.), Architecture and Urbanism of the British Empire (Oxford History of British Empire), (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 19-51.

D. Maudlin, 'Politics and Place-making on the Edge of Empire: Loyalists, Highlanders and the Early Homes of British Canada', in D. Maudlin and B. L. Herman (eds.), Building the British Atlantic World: Spaces, Places, and Material Culture 1600 -1850 (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2016), pp. 290-313.

 D. Maudlin, ‘Cyma Recta: Palladianism and the Everyday’, in Palladian Design: The Good, The Bad and the Unexpected (Royal Institute of British Architects) (RIBA Books, 2015), pp. 30 – 43.

R. Brown and D. Maudlin, ‘Concepts of Vernacular Architecture’, in S. Cairns, C. Crysler and H. Heynen (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory (Sage, 2012), pp. 340-356.

D. Maudlin, ‘Telling Stories: Myths and Memories of the ‘blackhouse’ in the Scottish National Narrative’, in O. H. Turner (ed.), The Mirror of Great Britain: The Geography of British Architecture in the Seventeenth Century (Spire Books, 2012), pp. 261-281.

Personal

Personal

Reports & invited lectures

'The Inn in the Atlantic World', Dept of History, Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Guelph, 2021

'Impact Roundtable', University of Plymouth, 2020

'Space, Mobility and Material Culture in the Atlantic World', Penn Design, UPenn, 2017.

'The Inn at the Intersection of Space, Mobility and Material Culture', Mobility and Space in Early Modern Europe, Oxford University, 2017.

'The Inn in Early Modern Urban History', Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester, 2017.

'Understanding the Architecture and Urbanism of Mining', Mining Cultures and Environments Workshop, Brunel University, 2017.

'Travel Space and Travel Writing in the Eighteenth Century', Dept. of English, University of Glasgow, 2017.

'Roads, Maps and Inns in Eighteenth-Century Britain', Maps and Society Lecture Series, Warburg Institute, 2017.

'Rural Retreat and the Love of Landscape', Devonshire Association, 2017.

'Building the British Atlantic World', Open University: Global History podcast, 2016.

'The Idea of the Cottage in English Architecture', Devon Rural Archives, 2016.

'The Tavern: Cultural Power and Built Space in the British Atlantic World, Space, Mobility, and Power in Early America and the Atlantic World, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University Paris-Sorbonne, Paris 2016.

'Social Space and the 'Principal Inn' Network in the British Atlantic World', Spaces and Places of Leisure in the Early Modern World, German Institute of Historical Research, London, 2016.

'Among the Trees: building inns and being British on the Early American frontier', European Architectural History Network, Dublin, 2016.

'A Narrow View of Nature: early modern travel itineraries, maps and inns', Transforming Topographies, British Library and Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, 2016.

‘Palladio and the Everyday’, Palladio and Palladianism, RIBA, 2015.

‘The Inn, the Traveller and the Atlantic World’, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Research Forum, Colonial Williamsburg, 2015.

 ‘Different Buildings, Different People, Same Place? Bringing Order to the Scottish Countryside’, Vernacular Revivals, Vernacular Architecture Group, Oxford University, 2015.

 ‘Impermanence, Time and the Vernacular’, New Light on the Vernacular, Isle of Man, University of Liverpool, 2011.

‘Landscape and the Containment of Modern Britain’, Traditions of Myth-Making, International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments, Beirut, 2010.

‘Townscape, Tradition and the Suburbs’, European Architectural History Network, Guimaraes, Portugal, 2010.

Conferences organised

'New Audiences', Museums Federation, Annual Conference, 2019

Octopus Heritage Network, Annual Conference, 2019
Urban and Rural Vernaculars, Study Tour, Society of Architectural Historians (US) and Vernacular Architecture Forum (US), Glasgow Conference, 2017
Tavistock World Heritage Site, Study Tour, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, Plymouth Conference, 201Routes, Routs and Migrations, University of Plymouth, 2013
Fixed? Architecture, Incompleteness and Change, University of Plymouth, 2011
Transatlantic Exchanges (AHRC Network conference), University of Plymouth, 2010
Separateness and Kinship: exchanges between Britain and New England, Transatlantic Exchanges Forum (AHRC Network symposium), Universities of Plymouth and Exeter, 2009
Built from Below: British Architecture and the Vernacular, joint symposium of Society of Architectural Historians and Vernacular Architecture Group, Arts’ Workers Guild, London, 2008
The Eighteenth-Century House Conference, Society of Architectural Historians, Vernacular Architecture Group and Georgian Group, Saltram House, Plymouth, 2007

Other academic activities

Media consulting and interviews

BBC News, interview, ‘Frogmore Cottage: the Queen’s gift for Harry and Meghan’, 2019

Histories of the Unexpected podcast, ‘Powderham Castle Special’, 2019

CNN, interview: ‘Contemporary housing design in the Scottish Highlands’, 2018

Country Life, interview: 'Castle with the Exe Factor', 2017

BBC Spotlight: ‘Plymouth team at Powderham Castle’, 2017

Open University podcast, ‘Building the British Atlantic World’, 2016

SKY Atlantic, consultant: Great Britain: Our Story, 2012

BBC2, consultant: The Age of Reason, 2009

BBC1, consultant: How We Built Britain, 2007