Dr Peter Lindfield and Oliver Cox

Dr Peter Lindfield

Peter took his PhD at the University of St Andrews. Furnishing Britain: Gothic as a National Aesthetic examines the from, development and meaning of Gothic Revival interiors in Britain, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between furniture and architecture.

Currently, Peter is a visiting lecturer at the Kunsthochschule at the University of Kassel, Germany, teaching British art, architecture and furniture. He is also a consultant lecturer on the country house MA at the University of Leicester, and post-doctoral tutor at the school of Art history, University of St Andrews.

This symposium corresponds with his Dunscombe Colt visiting fellowship at the Bodleian Library. Supported by the Bodleian Library, the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Georgian Group, this fellowship will facilitate a thorough examination of Oxford’s MSS concerned with eighteenth-century Gothic Revival architecture and related historical perspectives.

More information on Peter’s research interests and publications can be found at http://st-andrews.academia.edu/PeterNLindfield

Oliver Cox

Oliver will submit his doctoral thesis – ‘Rule, Britannia!: King Alfred the Great and the Creation of a National Hero in England and America, 1640-1800′ – in September 2013. His thesis examines how and why Alfred, king of the West Saxons, shifted from being of interest to a small number of scholars and churchmen to become one of the most important national heroes of the period.

His thesis grew out of his interest in the Gothic Revival and his work contributes to the historiographical trend which points towards a more ‘gothic’ eighteenth century. His published work includes essays on the Gothic Revival architecture of Oxford’s oldest college, University College; eighteenth-century visitors to Henry Hoare’s landscape garden, Stourhead; and the overlooked gothic imagination of 11th Duke of Norfolk at Arundel Castle.

For more details of Oliver’s work, click here.

From October 2013, Oliver will be the first director of the Thames Valley Country House Partnership, a new initiative in the Humanities Division at Oxford funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund.