University of St Andrews

Dr Sally Foster, University of Stirling, will be presenting new interdisciplinary research that explores the meanings and values of the St John’s Cross on Iona and its copies.

Replicas are common features on heritage sites, but what do we actually know about how they ‘work’ in practice? What is their value and how is their authenticity perceived? Drawing on archives in the University Special Collections and elsewhere, oral history and techniques of rapid ethnographic assessment Sally takes a cultural biographical approach to understanding how the meanings of things changes in different contexts and through time, and to provide a wider context for that understanding.

The lecture will be held in School 1, St Salvator’s Quadrangle.