About

I’m Ed, and I’m doing my PhD in Illustration with History at the University of Gloucestershire.

My project is titled Historical deconstruction and re-creation by narrative illustration, evoking the multiplicity of unheard narratives within historical experience.

Let’s unpack that:

Historical deconstruction: I’m a deconstructivist historian. As far as we’re concerned, there is no final single truth in history; there is no one story; there is no objectivity; there are multiple narratives, multiple truths, and multiple interpretations; the historian themself is central to the creation of meaning within history; and what’s left in the historical record (the ‘sources’/ traces of the past) will not tell you ‘the facts’.

Re-creation by narrative illustration: so I’m communicating stories by drawing. I’m not trying to accurately reconstruct the past, but to create my interpretations of it.

Evoking: like I just said, I’m not aiming for 100% accuracy. I’m aiming more to suggest stuff rather than state it definitively.

The multiplicity of narratives within historical experience: there is no one single narrative about any historical event because there’s usually a bunch of different people involved, and they’ll all have their own version. Of course, not all of these stories will have survived, so I’m using drawing to suggest what these stories of these people’s experiences might have been like.

My project is interdisciplinary (combining my two disciplines, Illustration and History) and practice-based (it’s based around my practice as an illustrator). I’m integrating illustration methods and strategies with historical practice and theory, and conducting drawing-based explorations into historiography. The project is also very reflexive - there’s a lot of stuff about my personal practice, and how I relate to the stuff I’m researching.

From a pamphlet about the project from 2019.

I’m using a specific historical case study for my investigations. This is William Shaw’s Bowes Academy, which he ran under sole ownership from 1814 until 1840. This was one of the Yorkshire schools - a group of boarding schools, mainly in Teesdale (then North Yorkshire, but now part of County Durham), which mostly ran from c. 1750 to c. 1850, and which typically aimed at middle-class parents in London.

Shaw’s Academy is the most well-documented of the Yorkshire schools, and operated when they were at their most popular. It was also pretty big - at one point, there were between 260 to 300 boys present. 

I’m mainly interested in the social relations of people at the Academy. I’m looking at William Shaw and his family, members of staff (both in the school and domestic), and the boys themselves; I’m also expanding my investigation to look further afield, such as William’s social connections and the parents in London and elsewhere.

What do I hope to do with all this? I want to revolutionise the discipline of history. Haha! That sounds big. I want to help open it up for people whose first mode of communication isn’t necessarily based around writing. I want to encourage people to explore the vast potential of lost narratives within historical experience. I want to see other researchers, further down the line, take some of my methods and apply those to their own work, generating a broader understanding of their own disciplines and the narratives contained (or hidden or excluded) therein.

Also, I want to conduct the deepest investigation of Shaw’s Academy to date. I want to get into areas that other researchers have not considered, and to dig stuff up and make suggestions that make people think twice. (Right now I’m thinking a lot about plausibility, and making an audience act like historians and question and interpret everything.)

And what about me? I got my BA and MA in Illustration at the University of Gloucestershire in 2015 and 2017 respectively. I’ve done a couple of commercial jobs here and there, but I want to show that illustrators can do research too, and we don’t have to go into the industry. I no longer do commissions.

In my spare time, I do further research, and more drawings, and a bit of writing, and I’m a member of my local fitness group and the local history society. (All meetings now conducted online.)

Anyway, that’s your introduction. I’m going to use this blog - when I remember - to show stuff from my project, and probably some extra stuff too. Sketchbooks, work in progress, secret things, excursions (within reason), that sort of business.

I'm fairly active on Instagram - follow me: @Ed.smike

But I'm only sporadically active on Twitter: @Ed_smike