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Reposted by Curious Travellers

Eleanor @eleanor-19thc.bsky.social · 13d

Thoroughly enjoyed attending @curioustravellers.bsky.social ECR Day yesterday. Enjoyed listening to some amazing and thought provoking papers and presenting on Maria Graham’s South American travel writing

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 24d

Second, Rhys Kaminski-Jones's 'Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain', in which Pennant features in a chapter on Enlightenment science, imperialism, and the image of the druid

Rhys Kaminski-Jones @rhyskamjones.bsky.social · Aug 19

Publication day!!

Find out how C18th Welsh cultural revivalism positioned itself within an expanding British Empire and a newly-minted British state. Includes Welsh sources on slavery/abolition, settler colonialism, Indigenous America, and more

🚨🚨🚨 35% off all formats with the code BB135 🚨🚨🚨

Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707-1819

Reframes the study of Welsh cultural revivalism, highlighting transnational and imperial contexts.

boydellandbrewer.com

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 24d

First, Ffion Mair Jones's 'Thomas Pennant: Cysylltiadau Cymreig', published by @gwasgprifcymru.bsky.social

Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 10

Two books coming out this summer from the Curious Travellers team!

1) Yn gyntaf, llyfr newydd Ffion Mair Jones (@ffionmjones.bsky.social) ar gysylltiadau Cymreig Thomas Pennant (Awst 2025, @gwasgprifcymru.bsky.social)

www.uwp.co.uk/book/thomas-...

Thomas Pennant | UWP

www.uwp.co.uk

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 24d

Two members of the Curious Travellers team will be launching books including Thomas Pennant at the Gorwelion Conference this week!

Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd / CAWCS @yganolfangeltaidd.bsky.social · Sep 2

📢Cynhadledd GORWELION Conference
🗓 17-19/09/2025
📍Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru @librarywales.bsky.social
🗣Prif siaradwyr / Plenaries: Mererid Hopwood, Barry Lewis, & Ian Stewart.
🔗Rhagor o fanylion / Further information: www.wales.ac.uk/cy/canolfan/...

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Reposted by Curious Travellers

sophie @sophiecairns.bsky.social · 29d

Very excited and grateful to have been given the chance to present at the ‘Journeys of Curiosity’ symposium, where I’ll be chatting a bit about curiosity, the sublime, and imperial anxieties in Romantic travel accounts of the Himalayas. Really looking forward to hearing all the other papers as well!

Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 29d

Curious Travellers are delighted to be partnering with the long-running Liverpool Travel Seminar to host an Early Career Symposium dedicated to ‘Journeys of Curiosity’

Bluecoat, Liverpool, 25/09. Free (including lunch), registration by September 19th

curioustravellers.ac.uk/journeys-of-...

‘Journeys of Curiosity’ Early Career Symposium – 25/09/2025 | Curious Travellers

curioustravellers.ac.uk

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 29d

Curious Travellers are delighted to be partnering with the long-running Liverpool Travel Seminar to host an Early Career Symposium dedicated to ‘Journeys of Curiosity’

Bluecoat, Liverpool, 25/09. Free (including lunch), registration by September 19th

curioustravellers.ac.uk/journeys-of-...

‘Journeys of Curiosity’ Early Career Symposium – 25/09/2025 | Curious Travellers

curioustravellers.ac.uk

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Sep 8

You can learn more about Pennant's Greenfield and its connections to different forms of unfree labour in our project publications.

'Travels at Home' Exhibition Booklet:

shop.wales.ac.uk/product/trav...

Mary-Ann Constantine, 'Curious Travellers' (2024):

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Travels at Home: Thomas Pennant, the Dee Estuary and Greenfield Valley – University of Wales – Shop

shop.wales.ac.uk

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Sep 8

Thomas Pennant's writings shed light on Welsh aspects of this "workhouse-plantation nexus" - in the Greenfield Valley in north east Wales, Pennant gives a whitewashed account of the conditions of child labourers, sent from distant parishes to work in the plantation-supplied cotton mills of Holywell

Pennant, who leased land to one of the Greenfield companies and was himself an entrepreneur with mining interests in the area,46 devotes a full page in the History of the Parishes of Holywell and Whiteford (1796) to the excellent work and living conditions of the 400 children working for the Holywell Cotton Twist company. They have clean, whitewashed, and ventilated purpose-built accommodation; a good dinner of soup, beef, pork, or herrings and potatoes, milk, bread, and porridge; access to a doctor; and regular Sunday school. This information, he notes, comes directly from ‘one of the partners’, Mr Christopher Smalley, the eldest son of the late founder. Mention of the factory in a recent study of child labour, however, suggests that this may not have been the whole story. In 1792 an agent to the Holywell cotton mills had to explain to the parish board of St Clement Danes in London (which had supplied the child workers): ‘that of the children bound to that company, seven out of nine had run away. He admitted that they were worked from 7 in the evening to 6 in the morning that they were not relieved during the night’. The common practice of factories sourcing children from distant parishes adds another thread to this story of interconnected dislocations.

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Reposted by Curious Travellers

Edwin Rose @edwinrose.bsky.social · Aug 29

Had a wonderful visit to @nhm-london.bsky.social Tring last week to examine some of the bird collection compiled by the naturalist Thomas Pennant (1726-98) - a very rare surviving 18th century ornithological collection. @curioustravellers.bsky.social

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jul 17

In a new entry on our research blog, Glasgow's Alex Deans reflects on how Thomas Pennant's tours of Scotland are haunted by absent, ancient trees - and the possibility of enlightened reforestation

curioustravellers.ac.uk/thomas-penna...

Monochrome illustration of a huge, split yew tree, with two leafy outgrowths on each side of a rent and serrated trunk. Subtitled "Yew tree at Fortingal".

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jul 14

Read our Principal Investigator Mary-Ann Constantine's blogpost 'Black Country Blues: A Welsh Bard Walking', on bardic radical Iolo Morganwg's (rather testy) encounter with the Industrial Revolution at Ironbridge

writingindustry.leeds.ac.uk/essays/black...

Wash/watercolour image of the bridge at Ironbridge in 1785, the metal structure in hazy colours played across boats on a river

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jul 14

Join some of our Curious Travellers team at the FREE Early Career symposium "Journeys of Curiosity", in Liverpool on 25th September 2025.

Propose your papers by 15th August!

Poster image for "Journeys of Curiosity" Early Career One-Day Symposium, Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BX, 25 September 2025: Free Event
Shows a Romantic-era illustration of the "New Bridge and Aqueduct, Rhiwabon"

The Liverpool Travel Seminar is a collaborative and interdisciplinary research forum launched jointly
by Liverpool Hope University, the University of Liverpool, and Liverpool John Moores University in
2007. It provides a constructive environment in which colleagues with interests in travel and travel
writing discuss the latest developments in their fields and reflect on future directions. The Seminar
enables cross-institutional dialogue and research collaboration at national and international level. This
year, we are collaborating with the AHRC-funded ‘Curious Travellers’ project, a partnership between
the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS), Glasgow University
and the Natural History Museum, London. Curious Travellers explores C18th-C19th travel writing,
creating digital editions of previously unpublished tours of Wales and Scotland, and focusing on the
journeys of naturalist and antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726-1798).

We invite PhD candidates and early-career scholars working in the fields of travel and travel writing to
share their own journeys of curiosity. The event is free to attend and limited funding for bursaries is
available. We welcome papers from diverse disciplinary perspectives, theoretical frameworks, cultural
contexts and historical periods. Papers can be either 10 or 20 minutes: please send enquiries and
abstracts of 300 words and a bio of 150 words to the conference organisers: mary-ann.constantine@cymru.ac.uk and e.edwards@wales.ac.uk by 15 August 2025.

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Reposted by Curious Travellers

Stephanie Holt @stephholtnh.bsky.social · Jun 23

And just like that our exhibition Curious Minds: Thomas Pennant and Gilbert White is over 🥲.
I’ve loved the whole process of exhibition design, installation, and events, and I’m so proud of what we created for @curioustravellers.bsky.social

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 18

Tune in tomorrow to hear more about our work on Skye!

Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 14

Then, on June 20th, the opening of 'ùir-sgeul | earth story', a new exhibition by our artist collaborator Eilidh MacKenzie, exploring Skye’s shieling culture. The exhibition takes place at Skye & Lochalsh Archive Centre, Portree, and is open until August 29th

An abstract artwork of billowing charcoal colours on a white and sandy base, with lichen-like yellow and green highlights. Labelled Scorrybreac' - acrylic, bogwood and charcoal on a canvas board.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 14

Two Curious Travellers events coming up on the Isle of Skye!

First, on June 19th, an afternoon of discussion and song @sabhalmorostaig.bsky.social, reflecting on Thomas Pennant's 1772 visit to Skye and his interactions with Gaelic culture

Ships, Songs, Shielings: Thomas Pennant in the Isle of Skye - Sabhal Mòr Ostaig

In the summer of 1772, the Welsh naturalist and antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726–98) embarked on a Voyage to the Hebrides. His lively, detailed account of the

www.smo.uhi.ac.uk

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 11

Starts at 1pm Welsh time (so in half an hour!)

Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 11

Still time to register to see this talk by @edwinrose.bsky.social!

Either online or in person at the National Library of Wales (@librarywales.bsky.social)

www.library.wales/visit/things...

Poster for an event held online and in the National Library of Wales today (Tuesday June 11th): Dr Edwin Rose, "Reading the World: Thomas Pennant and the Practices of Natural History"

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 10

2) And in the second project publication due in August 2025, Rhys Kaminski-Jones's monograph on the eighteenth-century Welsh cultural revival, featuring Thomas Pennant as an enlightenment-era interpreter of druids

Rhys Kaminski-Jones @rhyskamjones.bsky.social · Jun 10

My book, "Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain" (or "True Britons and Celtic Empires", if you'd prefer) is now AVAILABLE FOR HARDBACK PREORDER

Your library needs more about bardic antislavery, imperial complicity, and druids with telescopes, no?

boydellandbrewer.com/978183765195...

Book cover for "Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707-1819: True Britons and Celtic Empires". Cover shoes a painting of a Welshman with a gilded leek in his wide-brimmed black hat, warming a (seemingly alcoholic...) drink at a candle flame

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 10

Two books coming out this summer from the Curious Travellers team!

1) Yn gyntaf, llyfr newydd Ffion Mair Jones (@ffionmjones.bsky.social) ar gysylltiadau Cymreig Thomas Pennant (Awst 2025, @gwasgprifcymru.bsky.social)

www.uwp.co.uk/book/thomas-...

Thomas Pennant | UWP

www.uwp.co.uk

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 10

A wonderful, glowing review (by travel writer Julie Brominicks) of our Principal Investigator Mary-Ann Constantine's recent book on Romantic-era Welsh tourism

Order it to your libraries!

Two centuries ago they came in their multitudes, on horse on foot and by boat. Enquiring, measuring, painting, thinking, writing, drawing, and map-making. Crawling into coal mining huts. Falling off waterfalls. Motivated by scenery or science, they carried sketchbooks or magnifying glasses, scrutinized rocks and plants, and Welsh language and customs too.

Mary-Ann Constantine has unearthed 162 published tours from this period and a further 470 accounts in manuscript form, 17% of which are by women. These writings reanimate the landscape their authors saw, and by turn I see them more clearly; my peers of two centuries ago.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 10

Calling all artistic sleuths on Bluesky - if you know anything about the missing paintings from the home of Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant pictured here, please get in touch with @edwinrose.bsky.social!

Edwin Rose @edwinrose.bsky.social · Jun 7

Yes, here is a clearer image showing the penguins by Peter Paillou and a plate Pennant commissioned that reproduces one of the other images from this set of four that represents species from the arctic - do let me know if you know where they are!

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 4

Lastly Elizabeth Edwards from @yganolfangeltaidd.bsky.social presents on our ecological/artistic outreach work, exploring ornithology, extinction, and natural observation with primary school children from Pennant's own parish

A woman speaks animatedly by a slide showing a classroom set up for an artistic workshop

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · Jun 4

Now @edwinrose.bsky.social tells us (with appropriate shock and horror) of the large lost painting of penguins by Peter Paillou from Pennant's Downing Hall, sold at auction and currently unaccounted for.

Pictured (almost visibly...) in the slide - if you've ever seen it, get in touch!

A man in a jacket with widespread arms and a wide eyed expression speaks beneath a blurred black and white slide showing a painted penguin

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