This week, guest blogger Mhairi Ferrier writes about her work as an multidisciplinary researcher across archaeology, history and digital heritage. Here, she ponders her audience: What will the communities surrounding taighean-tughaidh take from her contributions to these respective fields?

Who’s my Audience? What is the purpose of my research? What am I even doing?

These are just some of the questions I ask myself on a rolling basis as part of the PhD process. When you work alone the majority of the time, there is so much time that allows for little niggling questions like this to creep in.

I am working on a multidisciplinary project about taighean-tughaidh (thatched houses) in the Western Isles. Utilising the disciplines of archaeology, history and digital heritage, this project is specifically focused on taighean-tughaidh in Uist and will combine archaeological recording surveys of buildings with memories and experiences of life of the houses shared through interviews. There are a lot of regional differences in the way these houses were constructed and the Uist experience has not always been well explained in the existing literature. At the end of my project, I’ll be making a digital archive to host my research findings and make them accessible to a wider audience.

Community engagement is at the heart of my project, ensuring that the research is completed in a way that is both sensitive of past experiences and culturally aware. In March, I held a number of community information sessions to share details about my project. During this event there were lots of interesting questions raised that made me wonder, who is my audience? I have been pondering this question of ‘audience’ for the past few months while I work to determine the locations of my case studies.

Does my writing have a different audience to the digital archive? Is the archive going to help locals or other researchers assist with genealogy, croft history or something else entirely?

Recently I undertook some fieldwork that has given me some insight into this question of audience.

Torlum, Benbecula

Recently, myself and my archaeology supervisor completed some preliminary recording work on the remains of a house which had previously been thatched. This taigh-tughaidh was located in the Torlum township, Isle of Benbecula. The house was occupied until the late 1970s and the walls have survived quite well. It was a gloriously hot day, which is not often the case in Uist. We got to work completing measurements, using a total station to give spatial data of this building and an earlier structure nearby. Finally, we made a scale-drawing of the front elevation. Due to the varying sizes of stones used – typical in this style of housing – it was taking me some time to complete the drawing as I tried to ensure it was accurately taken down in scale. I was growing somewhat weary in my motivation in the afternoon, as the sun was baking down on me measuring another stone and another. Measure stone, draw stone, lament how warm it was standing in this spot, measure stone, draw stone…

As someone who is typically a historian rather than an archaeologist, I was enjoying working outside, away from a desk or archive. However, as someone who sometimes struggles to stay motivated, I was starting to become slightly worried that I would struggle to maintain motivation when I am completing the bulk of my fieldwork next Spring.

Just as these thoughts continued to circle my mind, the owner of the croft whose land this house sat on came to chat with us as she is herself interested in archaeology. As we chatted away, the history of the house and of the family that built it and lived here began to be shared. While my project will seek to record people’s memories and experiences through oral history interview, there is something special about hearing elements of a house’s and a family’s history at the same time as being physically present within it. I think before this chat, despite knowing that I was going to interview people, I perhaps hadn’t thought about what information would be shared.

I hadn’t given much thought to how a specific house would be connected to the strong themes of Highlands and Islands history. That a house could be linked to the Land Raids of the 1930s as well as being at the heart of enforced emigration in the 1880s. There is then a wider context which can be explored and connected with through study of these houses.

I left Torlum that day with a level of excitement about what I could undercover. But what does this actually have to do with audience?

Muddled Clarity

My project is blending so many different aspects and bits of disciplines that it seems like it doesn’t really fit in with other bodies of work. Will historians be put off by the inclusion of many scaled elevation drawings and measurements? Will archaeologists be perplexed by the inclusion of interview findings? What role will digital heritage place here?

I think back to my community information session and thinking about who would be interested in my archive. ‘Does my writing have a different audience to the digital archive? Is the archive going to help locals, other researchers, assist with genealogy or something else entirely?’

Torlum has shown me that all of these groups are and can be my audience. My work is not defined to one discipline, so why does it need to be confined to one group of people? My findings will guide my writing, and these findings may open up more audiences such as Benbecula descendants Saskatchewan, Canada as shown by this house.

As researchers we spend so much time thinking about how our research links to what others have written in our field. My current thinking is that if a project incorporates and utilises a number of disciplines then there is scope for the audience to be a bit different too. It doesn’t need to be limited to just historians or just archaeologists, the methodology is unique so is the audience.

Research can be messy! I’ve gotten to the end and haven’t given a concrete answer to who is my audience? What I have hoped to convey is that sometimes the answer isn’t always clear but it will be in the end.

Mhairi Ferrier (she/her) is from Angus. After a long time in Edinburgh, she is currently living in South Uist. Mhairi’s PhD project is a SGSAH funded CDA between the UHI Centre for History, UHI North, West and Hebrides and Ceòlas Uibhist. The project blends archaeological recording, oral history, digital heritage and community engagement as a means of studying Uist’s taighean-tughaidh (thatched houses). Wider research interests cover the modern and contemporary Highlands and Islands, particularly infrastructure, protest and documentary film.

You can find out more about Mhairi’s research here.