Dr Barbara Penner wins major grant from Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA)

Congratulations to Dr Barbara Penner and Prof Adrian Forty from UCL's Bartlett School of Architecture who have been awarded a prestigious Joint Research Programme (JRP) grant from the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) to contribute to the research project, 'Printing the Past: Architecture, Print Culture, and Uses of the Past in Modern Europe'.

'Printing the Past' will examine the relationship between architecture, print culture, and uses of the past in modern Europe and beyond. Focusing on the architectural debate from the late 18th to the early 20th century, it will look at the ways in which new notions of the past were negotiated and constructed through architecture.

Led by the Oslo School of Architecture (AHO), the collaborative research project has been awarded €1.5m over three years, and involves four academic and five non-academic partners, which include the Victoria and Albert Museum and the RIBA.

For the Bartlett School of Architecture portion of the bid (€300,000), Dr Penner and Prof Forty will work closely with Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner, Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and RIBA Architecture Partnership Lead Curator, to deliver a conference, exhibition, and publication, supported by a funded PhD student.

The project is one of 18 innovative and exciting humanities-centred projects funded under the JRP, 'Uses of the Past', which was awarded a total budget of €21m under a highly competitive call process.    

More information

Principal investigators: Prof Mari Hvattum, AHO, Norway; Prof Carolyn Van Eck, Leiden University, Netherlands; Maarten Delbeke, Ghent University, Belgium; and Dr Barbara Penner, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, UK. Prof Adrian Forty, The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL will also contribute to the project.

Non-academic partners: V&A/RIBA; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo; and the digital media lab Factum Arte, Madrid/Bologna.

HERA - Humanities in the European Research Area - is a partnership between 24 Humanities Research Councils across Europe and the European Commission, with the objective of firmly establishing the humanities in the European Research Area and in the European Commission Framework Programmes.

Image: General view of the abbey mills pumping station, The Illustrated London News, pg 161