About the (Hi)stories of Violence Project
This project, funded by the University of Oxford’s John Fell Fund, explores how the Tower of London has been conceptualized in the cultural imagination from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Even though the Tower was a site of torture for only a small portion of its history, it has come to be associated with oppression and state violence.
This project explores the gulf between fact and fiction, and this strand of research offers rich yet untapped potential for investigating the reception and perception of violence, as well as complicating narratives told in scholarship and to visitors today.
Building on a successful TORCH Knowledge Exchange Fellowship between the University of Oxford, Historic Royal Palaces, and the Royal Armouries, ‘(Hi)stories of Violence’ focuses on the cultural identity of the Tower, and, in particular, the ways in which representations of the Tower (including in histories, literature, art, plays, and film) have shaped the way it is and has been understood by past and present visitors.
The project’s place-based approach has the potential to amend how we understand, conceptualize, and communicate (hi)stories of violence to academic and public audiences, and will inform onsite interpretation and live programming.
Visit the (HI)STORIES OF VIOLENCE Project
Image: The Bloody Tower @Historic Royal Palaces
