My name is Jo Birch, as an undergraduate, I am studying History and Politics and have worked as a Collaborative Research Intern on the Dr Tara Hamling and Professor Matt Houlbrook Project ‘What’s in the Box?’ focusing on lantern slides that accompanied lectures relating to Bournville, a model village founded by George Cadbury located next to his Chocolate factory, in 1895, and about the Chocolate Factory itself.
In the project, I catalogued lantern slides, and drawing on additional primary and historiographical sources, analysed and interpreted them, in terms of their role and what they were used for, producing information about the slides for a display. The cataloguing involved looking at photographed scans of the lantern slides and recording information about them, as well as doing some research to ascertain the location of the images of the slides for example and inputting them into an Excel spreadsheet. I enjoyed the project, especially the cataloguing element, as it was very interesting to research Bournville and to view early lantern slides.
The interest that the lantern slides themselves held was twofold. This is because, not only were they likely used as a teaching or lecture aid to spread ideas about the garden city movement, but also because the slides were tinted after development, rather than in colour, which represents an early form of photography from before the 1942 invention of colour photographic films. It was this interest in the lantern slides, as well as the title of the internship, which highlighted the ‘puzzle’ element of the research, which drew me to the internship. I found that the interest I had in the lantern slides before the internship in some ways increased during the internship, which was one of the reasons why I found the internship so enjoyable.
Through research, I was able to further understand how the lantern slides were used almost as a ‘guide-book’, promoting Bournville and the wider model village movement, and as teaching tool available to people for a minimal cost, since Cadbury’s ‘lantern lecture bureau’ only charged postage for groups to borrow the lantern slides, which were in collections which accompanied lectures. It was this understanding which I found so enjoyable; learning about the role that the lantern slides had in spreading ideas highlighted the use of educational aids in the past, and how photography was utilised to spread the ideas of the Cadbury to others and within the Garden City Movement.
I also found the internship’s emphasis on research interesting and useful as it allowed me to understand academic research more. The internship helped to further understand the role of primary sources in research, and the usefulness of spreadsheets and tables to easily store data about primary sources. This gave me a brilliant insight into academia, which is something I may look into in the future.
Looking at the Collaborative Research Internship as a whole, I really enjoyed it and would highly recommend this experience to anyone who is interested in academia, research or is interested in pursuing a career in academia or a related field.
Joshua Birch, BA History and Politics