Dr Marion Harney

BA (Hons) MPhil, PhD

Profile

Marion Harney, Director of Studies, Conservation of Historic Gardens and Cultural Landscapes, University of Bath. Marion devised the postgraduate degree course in the Conservation of Historic Gardens and Cultural Landscapes and was appointed Director of Studies in 2007. In 2013 she was invited to become a Trustee of the Garden History Society, the statutory consultee for all registered landscapes in the UK, and has recently been elected as Chair of the Joint Conservation Committee.

Marion has also been invited to participate in a Workshop organised by B&NES, in partnership with Cotswolds AONB, to explore the possibility of a Landscape Partnerships funding bid to Heritage Lottery Fund for the green setting of Bath World Heritage Site (WHS). The recently approved Green Infrastructure Strategy for B&NES, the Setting of Bath WHS document and the Cotswolds Management Plan all highlight the need for coordinated and positive management of this unique landscape.

In the recent past she has been an invited speaker for the European Conservation Summer School, University of Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Programme and University of Plymouth and Organising Committee member: VI International Conference Structural Analysis of Historic Construction (SAHC 08). Marion acted as advisor and researcher for an exhibition of research work held at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers at the Sorbonne, Paris (2009).

She was also an adviser to the Steering Group coordinating an ICOMOS-UK conference at the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment 29-30th April 2008: Action on Skills training and Education for the historic environment and to the American Institute of Architects Historic Resources Committee international conference, Historic Preservation in Professional Architectural Education (2005).

For a time, Marion was Heritage Coordinator at the University of Bath, liaising with organisations involved in heritage matters and arranging a series of symposia concerned with heritage issues on 'Pleasure Gardens', 'Brunel: Works of Genius', 'The Country House and Estate', 'Ruins', and the workshop 'Conservation in Education' jointly with RIBA, and ICOMOS-UK. 

Graduating from the University of Bristol with a BA (Hons) degree in English Literature in 2000, Marion joined the University of Bath in 2001 as a full-time Research Officer for the ‘Pevsner Architectural Guide to Bath’ (Yale University Press, 2003), then in 2005 was awarded a Master of Philosophy degree in Architectural History and Theory on completion of a dissertation titled ‘Alexander Pope and Prior Park: A study in Landscape and Literature’. In 2011 she was awarded her PhD on completion of a thesis titled 'Place Making for the Imagination: Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill'.

Marion’s main interests are the history and theory of historic, designed and cultural landscapes and their conservation. She has a particular interest in eighteenth century landscape and literature and in the digital reconstruction of lost landscapes.

Research

Co-investigator with Prof Paul Richens in an application to the Big Lottery Fund (November 2009) in partnership with the Bath Preservation Trust: to digitally reconstruct Beckford’s Ride as an interactive model for exhibiting at Beckford’s Tower during the 250th celebrations of William Beckford in 2010. The project is now complete and the CASA virtual 3D landscape recreation of Beckford's Ride is now installed and running in the Beckford Tower Museum.

A conference presentation of the project was demonstrated at the Electronic Visualisation and the Arts conference (EVA, London) in July 2011 by Prof Richens. Reconstruction of Historic Landscapes’ was awarded best in the EVA London 2011 presentation competition. An updated and extended version of the paper is to be published later this year in a Special Issue of the MIT journal – Leonardo.

Co-investigator with Prof Alan Day for a project funded by the National Trust to make a textured digital model of Philip Webb’s Red House – (the only house commissioned, created and lived in by William Morris, founder of the Arts & Crafts movement). The project is now complete.
Marion’s book Place Making for the Imagination: Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill is being published in November by Ashgate, a leading international publisher of art history scholarship and research. Marion is currently editing a book on the ‘Conservation of Historic Gardens and Designed Landscapes’ for Wiley Blackwell, which will be published later this year.

Teaching

• MSc Conservation of Historic Gardens and Cultural Landscapes

Publications