Following the success of Dialogues of the Dead: A Day of Explorations of Life Writing and Death, presented by the Centre for Life-Writing Research last year, The Wildgoose Memorial Library is hosting a series of events in association with the CLWR as part of the Arts & Humanities Research Institute’s pop-up research studios.

From 27 February - 6 March 2019, in association with Professor Clare Brant and James Metcalf (PhD student in the English Department), and with the help of King’s Archives, Jane will present material from the Wildgoose Memorial Library collection as the backdrop for a series of small workshops; an event for up to 20 people, and scheduled drop-in sessions. Bringing together artists, art historians and researchers from across the arts and humanities (including medical humanities). 

The Wildgoose Memorial Library at King’s will consider death in relation to life writing; focusing on its material culture, artefacts and literature; archival evidence including letters and diaries, and online; bureaucratic documents, records and publications.

Planned workshop themes include:

• Wills, Wishes & Dispersal: Collectors, Collections and their Legacies
• Talking in the Library, with Bill Sherman, Director of the Warburg Institute
• Brief Lives: Untimely Deaths, Art & Aftermath
• Grave Matters
• Objects & Magical Thinking

Numbers will be limited due to the size of the rooms available; speakers and respondents will be invited – but there will also be places available on a first come, first served basis - please contact Jane Wildgoose on wildgoose@janewildgoose.co.uk for further details.

For a full list of events and further information please see here.

The Wildgoose Memorial Library is a collection of found and made objects, photographs, documents and books assembled by CLWR Visiting Senior Research Fellow Dr. Jane Wildgoose. The Wildgoose Memorial Library is a research resource for, and an integral part of Jane's practice as an artist with an interest in the histories of collecting, mourning and remembrance. 

Since 2003, when the WML first opened its door as part of the research and development of a documentary for BBC Radio 4 (about a strand of Lord Nelson’s hair bought on eBay), and a subsequent NESTA Fellowship to develop her role as its Keeper, Jane has presented her collection in a wide range of venues: from the cellar of a derelict eighteenth-century mansion in Epping Forest, to the modernist splendour of Hornsey Town Hall; a contemporary art gallery in the USA, and nineteenth-century crypts at St Pancras and Bethnal Green in London. Taking inspiration from the 'working cabinets' of great collectors of the past (for instance, the Duchess of Portland, Sir John Soane, and Henry Wellcome) she has been developing the WML as a forum for debate about loss, mourning and collecting.