August 2025 Recipients
- Sharing the Burden of Memory: Cooperative Wayfinding through Video Game Dialogues – Steph Rennick, Faculty of Arts & Humanities; £3,788
- A key method for navigating video game worlds is interactive dialogue. In real life dialogue, memory plays an invaluable role: there is a social expectation to remember who we have spoken to, what stories we told, and to utilise our knowledge and past experience as we cooperatively navigate towards the goal of the conversation. However, game dialogue often violates these expectations. This deleteriously affects players’ perceived agency and immersion. Using our new custom-built extension tool for Twine, we will run two controlled experiments to test how a more realistic portrayal of memory (cooperative repair/remembering prior conversations) affects player experience.
- A key method for navigating video game worlds is interactive dialogue. In real life dialogue, memory plays an invaluable role: there is a social expectation to remember who we have spoken to, what stories we told, and to utilise our knowledge and past experience as we cooperatively navigate towards the goal of the conversation. However, game dialogue often violates these expectations. This deleteriously affects players’ perceived agency and immersion. Using our new custom-built extension tool for Twine, we will run two controlled experiments to test how a more realistic portrayal of memory (cooperative repair/remembering prior conversations) affects player experience.
- Intergenerational reminiscing of place through sport: The spatial mnemic of golf – Richard Haynes, Catherine Hennessy, & Levi Tippett, Faculty of Arts & Humanities and Faculty of Social Sciences; £2868.75
- The mnemic scope for a golfer to recall the details of their golf course, including the position of bunkers, trees, the contours of greens and other features, can be expansive. Allied to this spatial mnemic, the personal memories of particular golf shots are also connected to the landscapes in which they were performed. This raises the intriguing question as to why golf can create such strong memories of place? The aims of the project are to: 1) collaborate with elite student golfers and golf reminiscence groups in the UK and US to explore the value and meaning of golfing places, and the sporting imaginary. 2) scope the value of using sport reminiscence groups to understand how spatial memories in golf are retrieved and shared across generations.
- The mnemic scope for a golfer to recall the details of their golf course, including the position of bunkers, trees, the contours of greens and other features, can be expansive. Allied to this spatial mnemic, the personal memories of particular golf shots are also connected to the landscapes in which they were performed. This raises the intriguing question as to why golf can create such strong memories of place? The aims of the project are to: 1) collaborate with elite student golfers and golf reminiscence groups in the UK and US to explore the value and meaning of golfing places, and the sporting imaginary. 2) scope the value of using sport reminiscence groups to understand how spatial memories in golf are retrieved and shared across generations.
- Ecological Health for North Edinburgh: Community Farming, the Human Microbiome, and Memory Sensemaking – Toby Pepperell, Charlotte Hall, Greg Singh and team Faculty of Natural Sciences and Faculty of Arts & Humanities; £3,400
- This project explores how community farming, soil, and the microbiome contribute to health in North Edinburgh. It aims to (1) understand local relationships to land, food and health (2) build community methods for exploring soil/human microbial ecologies. The pilot project will begin a long-term, community-centred health intervention grounded in local place and memory. North Edinburgh faces spatial health inequities shaped by historical deprivation. Lauriston Farm gives a counter-narrative, communally healing and reconnecting the land. The human microbiome, vital for immune and mental health and shaped by interactions with nature and the soil, provides a bridge between people and place.
- This project explores how community farming, soil, and the microbiome contribute to health in North Edinburgh. It aims to (1) understand local relationships to land, food and health (2) build community methods for exploring soil/human microbial ecologies. The pilot project will begin a long-term, community-centred health intervention grounded in local place and memory. North Edinburgh faces spatial health inequities shaped by historical deprivation. Lauriston Farm gives a counter-narrative, communally healing and reconnecting the land. The human microbiome, vital for immune and mental health and shaped by interactions with nature and the soil, provides a bridge between people and place.
- Minds, Brains, and Cities: Phenomenological, electrophysiological, and psychophysiological facets of place identity and attachment – Georgios Argyropoulous, Jan Kuipers and team, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Faculty of Arts & Humanities; £1,055.75
- Threatened by globalisation and environmental catastrophes, person-place bonds are crucial for social cohesion. While Psychology and Neuroscience can develop implicit attitude markers, these bonds are still operationalised by self-report measures-susceptible to self-presentation and social desirability biases. We will investigate explicit (self-report scales, semi-structured interviews) and implicit (behavioural/electro/psycho-physiological) aspects of cognitive-emotional processes underlying Scottish city dwellers’ bonds with their cities.
- Threatened by globalisation and environmental catastrophes, person-place bonds are crucial for social cohesion. While Psychology and Neuroscience can develop implicit attitude markers, these bonds are still operationalised by self-report measures-susceptible to self-presentation and social desirability biases. We will investigate explicit (self-report scales, semi-structured interviews) and implicit (behavioural/electro/psycho-physiological) aspects of cognitive-emotional processes underlying Scottish city dwellers’ bonds with their cities.
- Lacustrine Lismore: Exploring the place knowledge and social values of Loch Baile a’ Ghobhainn – Liz Robson, Ruth Olden, Tânia Casimiro, Eileen Tisdall (Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Faculty of Natural Sciences); £2755
- This project focuses on the place knowledge of Loch Baile a’ Ghobhainn on the isle of Lismore in Argyll and Bute. The Loch is a rare type of freshwater lakeknown as a marl lake. Scotland’s marl lakes are considered amongst the most pristine and are important invertebrate habitats, but they are vulnerable to degradation. We will explore the memories, embodied experiences, heritage, and values that communities associate with the Loch and how change at various temporal scales is perceived and remembered. Our interdisciplinary approach integrates contemporary archaeology, critical heritage studies, and cultural geography, more commonly deployed in urban, built environment contexts, to explore a rural, natural feature, the significance of which is traditionally understood in ecological terms.
- This project focuses on the place knowledge of Loch Baile a’ Ghobhainn on the isle of Lismore in Argyll and Bute. The Loch is a rare type of freshwater lakeknown as a marl lake. Scotland’s marl lakes are considered amongst the most pristine and are important invertebrate habitats, but they are vulnerable to degradation. We will explore the memories, embodied experiences, heritage, and values that communities associate with the Loch and how change at various temporal scales is perceived and remembered. Our interdisciplinary approach integrates contemporary archaeology, critical heritage studies, and cultural geography, more commonly deployed in urban, built environment contexts, to explore a rural, natural feature, the significance of which is traditionally understood in ecological terms.
- The Fellowship of the Stone – Sally Foster (Faculty of Arts & Humanities); £1500
- A composite biography of Stone of Destiny, embracing unauthorised lives of its previously unappreciated 1951 fragments, and replicas, offers an extremely rich and memorable case study in navigating the relationship between remembering, imagining and testimony. Since 2025, public responses to the lead applicant’s research are revealing new stories about the Stone of Destiny’s unauthorised life while exemplifying complexities of remembering, imagining and testimony in a charged environment. Just how can we understand and employ the recent past of this highly and publicly contested national icon, its story so knitted with historical myths and modern tropes of (in)authenticity that there is massive popular resistance to ‘authentic history’?
- A composite biography of Stone of Destiny, embracing unauthorised lives of its previously unappreciated 1951 fragments, and replicas, offers an extremely rich and memorable case study in navigating the relationship between remembering, imagining and testimony. Since 2025, public responses to the lead applicant’s research are revealing new stories about the Stone of Destiny’s unauthorised life while exemplifying complexities of remembering, imagining and testimony in a charged environment. Just how can we understand and employ the recent past of this highly and publicly contested national icon, its story so knitted with historical myths and modern tropes of (in)authenticity that there is massive popular resistance to ‘authentic history’?
- Portable Places, Portable Memories: Creative Returning with Roger Robinson – Gemma Robinson, with Stirling Art Collection, Stirling Archives, and external collaborators; £2985.60
- This project proposes a campus residency for Roger Robinson (T.S. Eliot Prize winner for A Portable Paradise), whose early childhood was shaped by Stirling. We aim to creatively explore place and memory through the return of a major Black British poet to a formative site. Seed funding will establish a model of co-creative memory work, linking personal geographies with institutional and public spaces. It will benefit writers and the wider community by making visible the intricacies of Black British life in Scotland, and promoting ways to understand the “portability” of creativity and memory. In a time of intensified displacement, migration and racism, Robinson’s poetic return allows Stirling to be re-read not only as a site of personal history, but as part of wider Black British experience.
- This project proposes a campus residency for Roger Robinson (T.S. Eliot Prize winner for A Portable Paradise), whose early childhood was shaped by Stirling. We aim to creatively explore place and memory through the return of a major Black British poet to a formative site. Seed funding will establish a model of co-creative memory work, linking personal geographies with institutional and public spaces. It will benefit writers and the wider community by making visible the intricacies of Black British life in Scotland, and promoting ways to understand the “portability” of creativity and memory. In a time of intensified displacement, migration and racism, Robinson’s poetic return allows Stirling to be re-read not only as a site of personal history, but as part of wider Black British experience.
- Children Remembered: Tracing Neurodivergence and Care at the Royal Scottish National Hospital, 1863–1925 – Sarah Bromage, Faculty of Arts & Humanities; £720
- This project will explore the lesser-known experiences and treatments of children in a Scottish psychiatric hospital as a first step towards a broader creative project with the Art Collection and community partners – one which champions artistic expression within Scottish neurodivergent communities today.Founded in 1863, the Royal Scottish National Hospital (RSNH) became the largest psychiatric institution in Scotland for children, providing treatment to over350 children by the early 1900s. Treatments were considered progressive, including teaching employment skills/trade, art therapy, and exercise in rural settings. Although ‘neurodiversity’ was not coined until the 1990s, this study will build on scholarship that connects 19th century terminology, diagnoses and treatments with modern symptoms of neurodiversity (e.g., learning difficulties [e.g. dyslexia], epilepsy, schizophrenia and depression).
May 2025 Recipients
- Unfinished Business: mapping the traces of the Scottish Independence Referendum – Coree Brown Swan and Maike Dinger, Faculty of Arts & Humanities; £2,500
- This project explores how place and memory intersect in Scotland’s independence movement by examining the “unfinished” nature of the 2014 referendum. While memorials often mark victories, this project asks: what happens when political transformation is peaceful, powerful, yet unrealised? Through oral history interviews with 2014 activists, artists, and campaigners, alongside ethnographic walks through key referendum sites, this project examines informal memory practices and how individuals re-inhabit spaces of political contestation.
- This project explores how place and memory intersect in Scotland’s independence movement by examining the “unfinished” nature of the 2014 referendum. While memorials often mark victories, this project asks: what happens when political transformation is peaceful, powerful, yet unrealised? Through oral history interviews with 2014 activists, artists, and campaigners, alongside ethnographic walks through key referendum sites, this project examines informal memory practices and how individuals re-inhabit spaces of political contestation.
- Memories of Home: how displaced children and young people reflect on spaces and places – Margaret Malloch, Maria Fotopoulou, Maggie Grant, and Guardian Scotland (Faculty of Social Sciences); £3,877.95
- This proposal aims to revisit recently completed research to excavate memories of home. Drawing on primary research conducted across 4 research projects exploring the experiences of recovery and safety for displaced young people who have left (voluntarily or by coercion) places of upheaval it will consider the conceptual and real borders of home, and how locations of home may be fixed and historic, or transitionary and contextual.
- This proposal aims to revisit recently completed research to excavate memories of home. Drawing on primary research conducted across 4 research projects exploring the experiences of recovery and safety for displaced young people who have left (voluntarily or by coercion) places of upheaval it will consider the conceptual and real borders of home, and how locations of home may be fixed and historic, or transitionary and contextual.
- Grangemouth: a growing town 1965-2025 – Sarah Bromage, Audrey Grant, Ruth Olden, and John Sutton (Art Collection/ Faculty of Arts & Humanities); £3,156.10
- In 1965 filmmaker, Douglas Gray made Grangemouth: A Growing Town – a study of its development from 1750 until modern times. This showed Grangemouth as a vibrant and populated place. Today the town centre is empty of people and shops. This project will undertake a series of observational walks over summer 2025, using photography and film to interrogate and identify core subjects and sites for further investigation. The visual material collected will form an experimental short film exploring the themes of memory, loss and transition.
- In 1965 filmmaker, Douglas Gray made Grangemouth: A Growing Town – a study of its development from 1750 until modern times. This showed Grangemouth as a vibrant and populated place. Today the town centre is empty of people and shops. This project will undertake a series of observational walks over summer 2025, using photography and film to interrogate and identify core subjects and sites for further investigation. The visual material collected will form an experimental short film exploring the themes of memory, loss and transition.
- Emotionally Attached to Injustice: Visiting Fellowship for Alfred Archer – Ten-Herng Lai (Faculty of Art and Humanities); £1951.22
- This visiting fellowship will allow the main applicant to develop a new joint research project provisionally entitled “emotionally attached to injustice” in collaboration with Alfred Archer. The project will investigate the ethical issues raised by people’s emotional attachments to artifacts celebrating historical figures who played a key role in perpetuating injustice. The project starts from the observation that place attachment is core to one’s well-being, yet artefacts (such as monuments) people are emotionally invested in may be morally contentious (e.g. celebrating racism). This poses a thorny issue: many appear to be “emotionally held hostage” by unjust artefacts.This project will investigate ethical issues arising from this attachment.
- This visiting fellowship will allow the main applicant to develop a new joint research project provisionally entitled “emotionally attached to injustice” in collaboration with Alfred Archer. The project will investigate the ethical issues raised by people’s emotional attachments to artifacts celebrating historical figures who played a key role in perpetuating injustice. The project starts from the observation that place attachment is core to one’s well-being, yet artefacts (such as monuments) people are emotionally invested in may be morally contentious (e.g. celebrating racism). This poses a thorny issue: many appear to be “emotionally held hostage” by unjust artefacts.This project will investigate ethical issues arising from this attachment.
- Women, Housing and Place: a research symposium – Kim McKee, Anna Pearce, Jenny Preece (Sheffield), & Mhairi-Jean Ross (York) (Faculty of Social Sciences); £3580
- This is a research symposium on the topic of: Women, Housing and Place, co-organised by a project team from the Universities of Stirling, Sheffield and York. Whilst there is a growing body of international and inter-disciplinary literature that highlights the key role of women ascommunity activists and community leaders in a housing context, this gendered-lens has not been widely adopted in the UK context. We aim to address this critical gap in scholarship by bringing together key experts from academia, policy and practice to share both current research and learning from practice on this issue.
Centre for the Sciences of Place and Memory 