Culture and communication

Working on all periods from prehistory to the present, and on places across the globe, our researchers explore every kind of cultural activity, product and practice from poetry to pollution, alongside every aspect of communications from syntax to cyberspace.

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More equality in Neolithic society than previously thought, say researchers

Early Neolithic genetic data has helped archaeologists understand that there was likely more freedom and equality in Neolithic societies than previously thought.

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New Centre brings printing traditions back to York

A new Centre has been launched in York to celebrate the city’s tradition of printing, with the aim of protecting this endangered heritage craft.

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Reading and creative writing can help improve healing from domestic abuse, project suggests

Reading and creative writing can help survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence in working through experiences of trauma and assist in the healing process, according to new research.

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Hunter-gatherers kept an 'orderly home' in the earliest known British dwelling, study shows

Archaeological evidence from the world-famous Mesolithic site of Star Carr in North Yorkshire has shown that hunter-gatherers likely kept an orderly home by creating ‘zones’ for particular domestic activities.

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Featured research

Case study

Shaping Performance: Working with The Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company to Bring Dickens to Life

Professor John Bowen, a world expert on Charles Dickens, has been working with actors, writers, and directors in Stratford and London to help shape their understanding of Dickens’s life and composition process when performing adaptations of his novels.
Case study

Pearls, Sunflowers & Plantation: New Perspectives on Shakespeare’s England

Dr Lauren Working’s research presents ground-breaking new perspectives on how the Americas permeated Tudor and Stuart art and literature.

Case study

Narratives of Coercive Control

Led by Dr Hannah Roche (University of York) and Professor Katherine Mullin (University of Leeds), Coercive Control: From Literature into Law is the first interdisciplinary project to investigate the relationship between imaginative writing and the law of coercive control.

Research

Treespotting

A research project needed to spot trees on historic ordnance survey maps, so colleagues in computer science found a solution.

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