On the 14 October 2019, the network held its first workshop on the theme of genealogies, genetics and family history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The one-day workshop included two panels \u2013 a first on genetics and a second on family history \u2013 and a roundtable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The panel on genetics brought together Jerome De Groot, Maria Sophia Quine, and Petra Nordqvist to explore how people past and present engaged with their genetic material. De Groot<\/a> explored his current research on how people are using DNA technologies, like ancestry DNA or health genetics, to shape ideas about family, health and identity. He highlighted that while some people they are just a bit of fun, others are sophisticated users of this information, interpreting their genetic material with nuance and using it to fill gaps in family trees or understandings of identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If De Groot explore current\nengagements with DNA, Quine<\/a>\ntook us backwards to \u2018bad blood\u2019, exploring how in the early twentieth century\neugenic ideas focused attention on the diseases or disabilities that could be\ninherited from parent to child. Eugenics discourse interpreted such\ninheritances as \u2018bad\u2019, encouraging people with them not to have children or to\nbe sterilised (sometimes against their will). Looking at the work of the artist\nEdvard Munch, she highlights his anxiety around \u2018bad blood\u2019 within his own\nfamily, exploring how ideas about genetics shaped personal identity and experience\nof family. Nordqvist<\/a>\nshowed a similar anxiety in her research on families who either received or\ndonated genetic material (sperm, eggs etc) to produce children. Many families believed\nthat shared genetic material enhanced the parent-child relationship, requiring\nnon-biological parents to work harder or make more effort to compensate. In\nsome families, grandparents also felt a stronger attachment to children to whom\nthey were biologically related. Surprisingly very few parents refused this way\nof thinking about family for other types of connection, such as those based on\nsharing a household or love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A second panel of the day\nincluded papers by Tanya Evans and Delyth Edwards. Evans<\/a>\ngave an overview of her research with family historians over the last decade,\nwhere they explored their motivations and interests in searching their family\ntrees and developing their lineages. She was particularly interested in how\nresearch into your family broadened people\u2019s experience and so enhanced empathy\nfor others. Evans also talked about her work on #historianscollaborate<\/a>,\nlooking at the beneficial partnerships that can be produced when family\nhistorians and academic historians work together. Edwards<\/a>\ngave an overview of her new\nbook<\/a> and its inspiration \u2013 her mother. Edwards\u2019 mother was brought up in an\ninstitution in Belfast, an experience she was very open about and which\ninfluenced her parenting. Edwards used her mother\u2019s stories as a basis for her\ninterviews with other women who had similar experiences, seeking to explore how\nthey made sense of themselves and ideas of families when they had no practical\nexperience of living in one as a child. Interestingly Edwards\u2019\nbrother<\/a> was similarly inspired by his mother\u2019s story using it as the basis\nfor an art project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second panel was followed by\na roundtable that included Evans, Mike\nEsbester<\/a>, a historian who discussed his collaborative project on railway\naccidents, Antony Ramm<\/a> from\nLeeds Central Library and Gary Brannan<\/a>\nat the Borthwick Institute for Archives, York. This panel explored how\nhistorians and heritage professionals worked with family historians in their\nresearch. An interesting statistic was that now for many research libraries and\narchives, family historians make up a large majority of users. This means that\nnot only did a lot of archives originate in families but they are now used to\nproduce information for and about families \u2013 putting the family central to\ntheir goals and purpose. Discussion ranged from practical discussions about how\nand in what context we work with family historians to more abstract\nconversations about what unites us \u2013 a care of people, suggested Brannan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n