8 minute read
Fellows' focus
Mansfield’s academics operate at the forefront of research across the disciplines. Here are just some of their cutting-edge projects currently in progress.
The People of 1381
Dr Helen Lacey Associate Professor in Late Medieval History; Tutor for Visiting Students; incoming Senior Tutor
My recent project, ‘The People of 1381’ aims to produce the most comprehensive interpretation of the English Peasants’ Revolt to date. The revolt was one of the largest popular uprisings in medieval Europe and rocked the country in the summer of 1381. Our project team, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), comprises: Professor Anne Curry (University of Southampton), Professor Andrew Prescott (University of Glasgow), and Professor Adrian Bell (University of Reading). Our two researchers, Dr Herbert Eiden (Reading) and Dr Helen Killick (Oxford), have produced a database of all the records relating to the revolt, providing the first overview of events, places and people involved. Judicial and manorial documents have been combined with records of central and local government, poll tax records and soldier records, to reconstruct collective biographies of the people involved in the rising.
The project is a unique ‘history from below’, using an unparalleled set of medieval records to investigate the participation of social groups whose role has been little studied, such as household servants, soldiers and women. It uses Geographic Information Systems to map the development and structure of the revolt, identifying differing levels of community protest and examining how these fitted together.
The book of our project is underway and we hope to publish with Oxford University Press in 2025. In the meantime, you’ll find lots more information on our website: www.1381.online.
How can we sustainably remove carbon from the atmosphere?
Dr John Lynch Lecturer in Geography
Keeping global warming to internationally agreed limits – stopping the average global temperature increasing by more than 1.5-2°C above pre-industrial levels – is a Herculean task. We are so close to exceeding these temperatures, and so far off the pace in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that many now believe actively removing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere is also essential to mitigate climate change sufficiently. But how can we do this, and will we be able to ensure these carbon removal methods are themselves sustainable?
I address these questions as a researcher at CO2RE, ‘the greenhouse gas removal hub’ (co2re.org). Working with a range of demonstrator projects across Great Britain, we are exploring how much carbon could be removed by different methods, and which other impacts need to be considered. Potential techniques include drawdown of carbon into habitats through, for example, woodland creation or peatland restoration, to more novel approaches such as ‘Enhanced Rock Weathering’: crushing certain rock-types into dust and applying it on land, so that the particles react with and remove atmospheric carbon dioxide.
My research focuses on how we might scale-up removals, and whether they will support or frustrate other environmental objectives. Habitat carbon storage can provide additional benefits to biodiversity and support ecosystem services, but the carbon may be returned to the atmosphere if the environment is degraded in the future: a particular concern under climate change. Geological forms of carbon storage should prove more durable (although the evidence base is still being established), but come with potential pollution risks and high energy demand. Anticipating wider co-benefits and risks will be key to sustainably achieving ‘net-zero’ emissions.
Translating the past
Professor Alison Salvesen Tutorial Fellow in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies; Professor of Early Judaism & Christianity
What is ‘Scripture’? Who defines it? Who claims it has authority, and for whom? Can a translation be ‘inspired’? Or does its authority depend on the scholarship or traditions behind it? And is that authority intrinsic or gradually acquired? All these are questions pondered by scholars as well as people of faith.
The Hebrew Bible – the Christian Old Testament – is a collection of works written over several centuries, edited and glossed, in a language that is very different in structure to IndoEuropean languages like English or Latin. Poetry is universally hard to translate effectively, and the Hebrew Bible’s many poetic passages are no exception. Even the stories of the Old Testament have tricky details, unusual words, and cultural views that differ considerably from those of subsequent generations to the present day. So, it is unsurprising that over the centuries, interpretations of the Old Testament have been shaped by all kinds of factors, both political and religious. In the case of translations, literal renderings may appear more ‘authentic’ in their foreignness – but are ‘freer’ translations less faithful to religious ‘truth’?
These problems have existed since at least the very first translation of the ‘Torah’ (the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). This was made by and for the large community of Jews living in the Greek city of Alexandria in Egypt in the third century BC. Some laws in the Hebrew book of Exodus even seem to have been adjusted in Greek translation to better match those of the surrounding culture.
In the same period, back in Judea/Palestine, the Hebrew Scriptures were inspiring not translations but instead a kind of ‘fan fiction’ that developed their themes and characters, particularly from the book of Genesis. We only know of some of these works because of the discovery, in the late 1940s by Bedouin shepherds, of the ancient scrolls preserved in the caves of the Dead Sea. These works celebrate the antediluvian figure Enoch, divide history into 40-year ‘jubilee’ periods, present alternative accounts of the domestic lives of the patriarchs including Abraham, and give ideal dimensions for the Temple. Did these works intend to replace what we think of as ‘biblical’ scripture? Or were they a kind of homage to them, to be read alongside them as entertainment and instruction?
Many of these early Jewish religious writings were adopted by Christians and accorded a secondary status to their own scriptures, being termed variously ‘apocrypha’ or ‘deuterocanon’. They were regarded as instructive or even fun to read, but not to be used for determining doctrine. In contrast, Ethiopian Christians never really had a fixed list of authoritative biblical books, but a much wider appreciation of works to be read in churches. In Judaism during the medieval period, certain originally Jewish ‘apocryphal’ works were sometimes re-appropriated to be read as nonsacred literature. They were translated from Latin and German versions, back into Hebrew and also into Yiddish. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in these ‘parascriptural’ works for their narrative techniques and what they reveal of the religious attitudes of generations past.
Engineering defects in diamond
Professor Jason Smith Professorial Fellow in Materials Science
Materials is a very interdisciplinary subject bringing together physics, chemistry, engineering, and sometimes biology. I trained as a physicist (Wadham College, 1989-96) and my research today still has a strong physics element, with a focus on quantum information technologies and optical sensing. A key topic in my research is the atomic scale engineering of defects in diamond, using laser processing – a technique that my group has developed and which offers a rich combination of new science and exciting applications. In a recent paper we showed that we can watch individual atoms moving inside the diamond lattice, which provides new insight into the structure and interactions of defects. It’s a bit like performing chemistry on single molecules inside a crystal, and if we can control the reactions, we can synthesise defects on-demand and engineer devices that use them. The main application we’re pursuing for this research is to develop quantum memories for computing and communications systems. We work within the Government-funded National Quantum Technology Partnership, which is tasked with supporting UK economic development in the field. From December 2024, I’ll be an Assistant Director of a new Hub on Integrated Quantum Networks, which seeks to develop a quantum internet in the UK.
A second theme of my research is the sensing of chemicals in fluids for applications such as water quality and medical diagnostics, and in particular performing highly sensitive measurements on tiny fluid samples. We’re currently spinning out a company, Mode Labs Limited, to commercialise sensors to monitor water pollution in rivers, and hope to have our first products ready in 2026. Former Mansfield undergraduate, and now Associate Wine Steward, Nick Joinson (MEng Materials Science, 2019) is working with us to build and test prototype next-generation devices alongside the commercialisation activity.
