What does it mean to be ‘grounded’?
Does it make you think of being ‘rooted in reality’, ‘not flighty’, prevented from flying (of an aircraft) or indeed, to have to stay at home as a punishment?
Maybe for you it conjures more thoughts about territory and the ground we stand on?
Portability of place
Lucy Donkin, Senior lecturer in History and History of Art, researches the materiality and portability of place as this was exemplified by the symbolic movement of soil to and from the city of Rome during the Middle Ages and early modern period. She is also interested in understandings of soil and the environment within the medieval Islamic world and in modern uses of earth in contexts of commemoration and migration. Lucy is contributing a chapter to an MMB Edited Volume – Rethinking Migration.
Listen to this field recording of the European Robin, a bird that resides in the UK and can be sedentary, or sometimes migrates from the UK to Southern Europe or to the UK from Scandinavia, continental Europe and Russia. Recording made by Lawrence Shove and held in the British Library.