SARAH ALEXANDRA TARLOW, BA MPhil PhD

PRESENT POSITION:  Senior Lecturer, School of Archaeology and Ancient History,  University of Leicester

EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS

1991-1995:  Cambridge University:  PhD  Archaeology. "Metaphors of death in Orkney, 1600-1945 AD". Supervisor: Professor Ian Hodder

1989-1990:  Cambridge University:  M Phil Archaeology

1986-1989:  Sheffield University:  BA English Literature

(Solihull Sixth Form College: 3 A-levels; Tudor Grange Comprehensive School: 9 O-levels)

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

2006 - present: Senior Lecturer, University of Leicester

2000-2006: Lecturer in Historical Archaeology, University of Leicester

1995-2000: Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Wales Lampeter

1990-1991: Site assistant, Cambridge Archaeological Unit

CURRENT DUTIES

·         Co-Chair Scottish Archaeological Research Framework, Modern Panel (invited to help steer the development of a national research framework for Scotland).

·         Editor (with Fokke Gerritsen and Michael Dietler) Archaeological Dialogues (internationally recognised, A-listed journal).

·         Director of the Centre for Historical Archaeology, University of Leicester.

·         Teaching and course development, undergraduate and postgraduate, campus-based and distance learning for numerous modules. Module co-ordinator for several modules.

·         Course leader MA Historical Archaeology (campus-based and distance learning).

·         Postgraduate supervision.

·         School Exams Officer.

·         External Examiner, University of Winchester.

RESEARCH

My research to date has been largely in three overlapping areas. These are the archaeology of the eighteenth to twentieth century;  archaeological theory, particularly emotion and ethics; and the history and archaeology of death. My pioneering work on the archaeology of emotion was the first attempt to relate emotion studies to archaeology and remains the most fully formulated and extensively cited in the field. Additionally I was one of the first archaeologists in the UK to develop a new, theoretically-informed approach to the post-medieval period, an area which is now a thriving subfield with its own conferences and numerous students and practitioners. In recent years my research has become even more interdisciplinary and involves more social history. This is evident in my 2011 book Ritual, belief and the dead, and in my new million-pound project ‘Harnessing the power of the criminal corpse’ which brings together an archaeologist, a crime historian, a medical historian, a folklorist, a literary scholar and a philosopher.

PUBLICATIONS

Books

Tarlow, Sarah 2011. Ritual, belief and the dead in early modern Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Cherryson, Annia, Zoe Crossland and Sarah Tarlow (in press). A fine and private place: the archaeology of death and  burial in post-medieval Britain and Ireland. Leicester: Leicester Archaeological Monograph 22

Tarlow, Sarah 2007. The Archaeology of Improvement: Britain 1750-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hamilakis, Y., M. Pluciennik and S. Tarlow (eds) 2001. Thinking through the body: archaeologies of corporeality. New York: Kluwer Academic

Tarlow, Sarah 1999. Bereavement and commemoration: an archaeology of mortality  Oxford: Blackwell ('Social Archaeology' series)

Tarlow, Sarah and Susie West (eds) 1999. The familiar past? Archaeologies of later historical Britain.  London: Routledge. 

Peer-reviewed journal articles

University of Leicester Graveyards Group 2011. Frail memories: is the commemorated population representative of the buried population? Post-medieval Archaeology 45(2)[This is the publication of some work using research gathered collaboratively with student volunteers]

Tarlow, S. and A. Gramsch 2008. Does the archaeology of Europe exist? An archaeological dialogue. Archaeological Dialogues 15.1: 1-5

Tarlow, Sarah 2005. Death and commemoration. Industrial Archaeology Review

Van Bueren, T. and S. Tarlow 2005. The Interpretive Potential of Utopian Settlements. Historical Archaeology 40(1): 1-5

Tarlow, Sarah 2005. Archaeology of Utopia: Cyrus Teed's Koreshan Unity Settlement. Historical Archaeology 40(1): 108-118

Tarlow, Sarah 2003. Excavating Utopia: why archaeologists should study ‘ideal’ communities of the nineteenth century. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6(4): 299-323

Tarlow, Sarah 2001. Decoding ethics. Public archaeology 1: 245--59

Hamilakis, Yannis, Mark Pluciennik and Sarah Tarlow 2001. Academic performances, artistic presentations. Assemblage 6 (http://www.shef.ac.uk/~assem/issue6/art_web.html)

Tarlow, Sarah 2000. Landscapes of memory: the nineteenth-century garden cemetery. European Journal of Archaeology 3(2): 217-39.

Tarlow, Sarah 2000. Emotion in archaeology. Current Anthropology 41(5): 713-45

Tarlow, Sarah 1999. Capitalism and critique. Antiquity 73: 467-70

Lampeter Archaeology Workshop 1998b. Relativism, politics and debate. Archaeological Dialogues 5(1): 43-53

Lampeter Archaeology Workshop 1998a. Relativism, objectivity and the politics of the past. Archaeological Dialogues 4(2): 164-84

Tarlow, Sarah 1997. An archaeology of remembering: death, bereavement and the First World War. Cambridge Archaeological Journal  7(1): 105-21

Contributions to edited volumes equivalent to peer-reviewed journals

Tarlow, Sarah 2008. Who are you calling marginal? A squatter settlement in upland Wales. In P. Rainbird (ed) Monuments in the landscape: studies in honour of Andrew Fleming. Oxford: Tempus: 177-189

Tarlow, Sarah 2008. The extraordinary story of Oliver Cromwell’s Head. In J. Robb and D. Borić (eds) Past Bodies: body-centred research in archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books: 69-78

Tarlow, Sarah 2006. Archaeological ethics and the people of the past. In C. Scarre and G. Scarre (eds) The ethics of archaeology: philosophical perspectives on archaeological practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 199-218

Tarlow, Sarah 2003. Reformation and transformation: what happened to Catholic things in a Protestant world? In D. Gaimster and R. Gilchrist (eds) The Archaeology of Reformation 1480-1580. Leeds: Maney

Tarlow, Sarah 2001. The responsibility of representation. In M. Pluciennik (ed.) The responsibilities of archaeologists: archaeology and ethics. Lampeter Workshop in Archaeology 4 (BAR Int. 981). Oxford: Oxbow: 57-64

Hamilakis, Yannis, Mark Pluciennik and Sarah Tarlow 2002. Introduction: thinking through the body. In Y. Hamilakis, M. Pluciennik and S. Tarlow (eds) Thinking through the body. Kluwer Academic.

Tarlow, Sarah 2001. The aesthetic corpse in the nineteenth century. In Y. Hamilakis, M. Pluciennik and S. Tarlow (eds) Thinking through the body. Kluwer Academic.

Tarlow, Sarah 2001. Bodies, selves and individuals. In Y. Hamilakis, M. Pluciennik and S. Tarlow (eds) Thinking through the body. Kluwer Academic.

Tarlow, Sarah 2001. Archaeology. In G. Howarth and O. Leaman (eds) The Encyclopaedia of Death and Dying. London: Routledge.

Tarlow, Sarah 1999. Wormie clay and blessed sleep: death and disgust in later historical Britain. In S. Tarlow and S. West (eds) The familiar past? Archaeologies of later historical Britain. London: Routledge: 183-98

Tarlow, Sarah 1998. Romancing the stones: the gravestone boom of the later eighteenth century. In M. Cox (ed) Grave concerns, life and death in post-medieval England 1700-1850. York: C.B.A.: 33-43

Other publications (journals without peer review, book reviews, popular)

More than 20 book reviews, popular articles and publications in non-refereed journals.

RECENT GRANTS

2011 Wellcome Trust Research Programme (I am the PI): Harnessing the power of the criminal corpse

                                                                                                     £945,389

(co-investigators: Prof. Peter King, Prof Owen Davies, Dr Elizabeth Hurren)

2010 Society for Post-medieval Archaeology: Leicestershire graveyards

                                                                                                     £456

2004  Leverhulme Trust Research Programme: Changing beliefs about the body (PI: Dr John Robb)

                                                                                                     £1.19m

     of which the sum allocated to my sub-project was                 £144, 000

2003-4 Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship: The archaeology of Improvement in Britain 1750-1850                                                                                                     £20,000

2003 Arts and Humanities Research Board Research Leave Scheme: The archaeology of Improvement in Britain 1750-1850                                         £13,153 (declined)

SUPERVISION OF STAFF

I have acted as line manager to Dr Zoe Crossland and Dr Annia Cherryson, who were both employed as my research assistants under the Leverhulme Trust programme ‘Changing Beliefs of the Human Body.’ I am currently setting up the Wellcome-funded programme ‘Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse’, as part of which I will be heading a research team of at least ten people, five of whom I will line manage on a day-to-day basis.

SUPERVISION OF RESEARCH STUDENTS

Completions:

·         Gregory Stevenson (Modernity and the consumption of ceramics)

·         Hannah Sackett (Improvement in the Chilterns)

·         Kirsty Owen (Early modern commemoration in Gloucestershire)

·         Delight Stone (Gender at Fort Ross, Oregon)

·         Claire Strachan (Identity and space in the south-west woollen industry)

In progress:

·         Bly Straube (Material culture at Jamestown)

·         Emma Dwyer (Buildings of modernity)

·         Sarah Newstead (English and Portuguese cod fisheries in Newfoundland)

·         Michael Young (Archaeology of early Quaker communities)

EXTERNAL PhD EXAMINING

Amanda Kearney, University of Melbourne (An ethnoarchaeology of engagement: Yanyuwa country and the lived cultural domain in archaeology, 2004)

Hanneke Ronnes, University College Dublin (Architecture and elite culture in the United Provinces, England and Ireland, 1500-1700, 2005)

Lita Tzortopoulou-Gregory, Flinders University, Autralia (Twentieth-century commemoration in Greece, 2007)

Gustavo Porto-Carerras, University of Wales, Lampeter (The archaeology of early modern Braga, Portugal, 2008)

Layla Renshaw, University College London (Forensic archaeology, social conflict and the recent past in Spain, 2009)

Sam Walls, University of Exeter (War memorials and community identity in Devon, 2010)

Tim Flohr Sorensen, University of Aarhus (An archaeology of movement, 2010)

OTHER ACADEMIC DISTINCTIONS

1996 - 2003: Member of Advisory Board Archaeological Dialogues

2003 - 2011: Member of Editorial Board Archaeological Dialogues

2011 – present: Main Editor Archaeological Dialogues

2004 – present: Member of Advisory Board International Journal of Historical Archaeology

Invited Co-Chair Scottish Archaeological Research Frameworks Modern Period panel, initiative to develop a national framework for archaeological research

Conference Chair Society for Historical Archaeology conference committee 2013. Member AHRC Peer Review College

Regular referee of papers for Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Antiquaries Journal, Journal of Social Archaeology, Post-medieval Archaeology, Journal of Public Archaeology, Mortality and other journals.

Grant reviewer for National Endowment for the Humanities, National Geographic, ESRC.