Family Archives & their Afterlives is a Leverhulme funded project that explores the construction and curation of family archives from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Which items did families choose to keep? Why? And how were these collections re-read, re-used, and re-fashioned by later generations?
From dusty boxes of papers to scrapbooks, print cuttings, and other ephemera, this project peers into the archives of families from up and down the country and across the social spectrum, revealing the hidden hands and preservatory practices that have shaped our national archival heritage.
Imogen Peck is an Assistant Professor in British History at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests include the social and cultural history of early modern Britain and cultures of memory and commemoration across time and space. Her first book, Recollection in the Republics: Memories of the British Civil Wars in England, 1649-1659, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. She has also published on the wartime experiences of widows and civilians, early modern annotation practices and print culture, and processes of post-war reconciliation.
Family Archives and their afterlives in England, 1650-1838 