Postgraduate research students

Current Research

Through creative practice, my research critically reflects on the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of creative media practice in archaeology, with a particular focus on sound as a medium for creating and performing in archaeological landscapes. My work considers the archaeology of the Scottish Highlands, using the landscapes of Glencoe and Rannoch Moor. Through considering the townships, shielings, crofting landscapes, sheep farms and the contemporary landscape, I explore how as archaeologists we might represent stories about these places throughout time. Creative approaches to archaeological representation have challenged ideas around objectivity of traditional forms of representational practice, however predominantly, immersive technologies still employ terminologies that are perhaps unhelpful when thinking about the aesthetics of the type of media archaeology should be producing, and how we communicate ideas about embodiment and perception. At the same time, sensory archaeological approaches highlight the importance of considering multisensory understandings of the past, and methodological approaches are largely practiced, but remain quite textual, visually representational, which feels as if they are trying to fit within established archaeological practice.

My research considers how we might create immersive audio that deals sensitively with perception, immersion and reality, especially when it comes to dealing with a past reality that was very different from our own. Drawing in interdisciplinary links from sound studies, sound art, and performance studies, I am interested in the embodied, sensory experiences of people that lived in these past landscapes and communicating this with modern audiences. By creating field recordings, compositions, and immersive audio media, I explore how thinking about sound and archaeology can be a critical and active form of archaeological research. 

List by: Type | Date

• Dr Gareth Beale
• Dr Stuart Jeffrey
• Professor Michael Given

Robertson, E., & Stewart, E., (2024) ‘Once our hillsides were ringing’: Exploring new narratives of the landscape of Glencoe through archaeology and sound, The Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies, University of Glasgow.

Beale, G., Robertson, E., Smith, N., (2023) Storied Lands: Developing immersive interpretation for landscape-scale storytelling, Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology UK Conference, Edinburgh.

Robertson, E., (2023), Performing Glencoe - Creating Immersive Soundscapes in Highland Landscapes, European Association of Archaeology Conference, Belfast.

Robertson, Lizzie, (2022) Establishing a creative practice for collecting, composing, and performing Scottish Highland landscapes, Association for Environmental Archaeology, University of Glasgow.

Robertson, E., (2021), Creating sound and place in Scottish Highland landscapes, Scottish Archaeological Forum Conference, University of Glasgow.

Courses

• Archaeology Level 1: Archaeology of Scotland (GTA)
  
  
• Archaeology Level 1: Archaeology of the Modern World (GTA)
  
  
• Archaeology Level 2: Twenty things that changed the world (Lead GTA, tutorial development)
  
  
• Information Studies Honours: Music Curation and Analytics
  
  
• Information Studies Honours: Data Analysis, Visualisation and Communication

Archaeology Field School

• Glencoe Fieldschool Honours: Co-director in Digital and Creative Engagement.