People

Project Assistant

Emanuela is a phonetician and linguist, and leads the "Multiculturalism" strand of the project. She is interested in all languages and cultures, and is passionate about creating supportive and inclusive communities. Her own research focuses on the intelligibility of reduced speech.

Email: emanuela.buizza@york.ac.uk

Project Assistant

Alex is an art historian, leading on the "Visual Talking Points" branch of the programme. She is interested in participatory and practice-based art research, knowledge exchange practices, and research culture. Her own research focuses on fantasy art.

Email: alg82@cam.ac.uk

Project Assistant

Noah is a music psychologist, studying for a PhD at York, and leads the Open Research strand of the Creative Encounters project. His research focuses on the psychometric modelling of music selection behaviour and recommendation systems.

Email: noah.henry@york.ac.uk 

Richard Ogden has been the Director of the HRC since January 2019. He manages the work of the HRC, ensuring it continues to serve its many constituents in the Arts and Humanities as fully as possible.

Richard Ogden is a professor of linguistics in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science. He is a linguist and phonetician with a wide range of interests, including Finnish, British Sign Language, and Conversation Analysis. His work combines phonetic detail (that is, the way the sounds of speech are organised) with conversation analytic methodology, as a way of working out how people use aspects of speech to perform social actions like turn-taking, agreeing, complaining and telling stories. His work also addresses connections between speech and other aspects of embodied behaviour. He is currently working on click (‘tsk’, ‘tut-tut’) sounds in spoken English.

Richard has worked in interdisciplinary ways for a long time, including the Marie Curie Research Training Network Sound to Sense; he has served on several steering committees, including the Centre for Chronic Diseases and Disorders at York and the Centre for Deafness, Language and Cognition at UCL.

Jonathan Finch is the Deputy Director of the HRC and started his post in September 2020, a role which includes responsibility for the post-graduate cohort across the faculty and supporting the Director.

Jon is a professor of historical archaeology in the Department of Archaeology. His research connects historic landscapes, rural poverty, slavery and commemoration under the broad heading of globalisation. He has written widely on designed landscapes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly Capability Brown and Humphry Repton. He has also written on estate landscapes in northern Europe, as well as their colonial connections in the Americas. His fieldwork has taken him from Harewood House, near Leeds, to the plantations of Barbados, and excavations at a First World War training camp in the Yorkshire Dales.

Trained as an historian, Jon has always been committed to interdisciplinary research. He was part of the Marie Curie European training network on the history, archaeology and genetics of the transatlantic slave trade, EUROTAST, and is on the steering group of ENCOUNTER – the European Network for Country House and Estate Research.

Megan has worked at the University of York, supporting research, since 2019. She joined the HRC in 2021.

Megan is responsible for the smooth running of activities and events in the HRC and is the first point of contact for students and staff. She administers the HRC facilities in the Berrick Saul Building, including allocation of desk space and lockers in the postgraduate study area and coordination of bookings for the Treehouse. She manages the HRC's finances and provides administrative support to the Director. Megan is also the Administrator of the Centre for Modern Studies, the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies.

She is happy to help with enquiries about the HRC from academic and administrative staff within and beyond the University, current and prospective postgraduates and members of the public.