Tanya Harrod: Archaic Modernists: Women, Textiles and the Margins of Europe
Paddy Bullard reflects on Tanya Harrod’s seminar as part of the Department of English Literature and the MERL speaker series on the ‘Tangible and Intangible Countryside’ Tanya Harrod is the doyenne of modern folk art studies, and the most distinguished historian and critic of craft working in Great Britain today. She is best known as […]
Discovering the Landscape: Book now for a place on FOLAR's Landscape Education study day
Delegates at the 2016 FOLAR study day browsing a pop-up exhibition of landscape library and archive material in the MERL Reading Room Landscape Architecture and Management Education in the UK: past present and future What? This year’s FOLAR (Friends of the Landscape Library and Archive at Reading) Seminar deals with the origins and history of […]
Access to The MERL periodicals
Due to essential maintenance work, we regret to inform you that The MERL periodicals will be unavailable from Monday 13th February 2017 until further notice. These are the volumes found in the rooms at the far end of the open access library corridor and includes Country Life, The Engineer, Farmers Weekly, Farmer & Stockbreeder, The Field […]
Beekeeping, not just a hobby
Science engagement volunteer, Eilish Menzies, considers beekeeping and the role that it plays in food production. Walking through the MERL galleries you can see the crucial role bees play in past and present global food security. By simply taking a stroll through the collection, you can really get a sense of the progressive steps that […]
Melissa Harrison: At Hawthorn Time
Written by Dr Paddy Bullard, Associate Professor in Literature and Book History at the University of Reading. @MatWitness Melissa Harrison is a novelist, photographer and nature writer based in south London. Her first novel, Clay (2013) established her as a leading voice among the new ‘urban naturalists’. Her second, At Hawthorn Time (2015), is a powerful and ambitious attempt […]
Students: apply for a landscape research bursary before the end of February
Why should I apply? Our landscape collections are pretty special. Read this overview of our landscape collections or search our combined library, archive and object catalogue. Take a look at reasons to use our landscape collections in your research and topic and resource ideas. But could I apply? Are you: A) A taught undergraduate or postgraduate student? B) […]
Going digital: Reading Museum and the MERL team up
The digital world is not coming, it is already here. In fact, it has been here for some time. Online shopping is king, Google knows where you live, almost everyone has a smartphone and the President-elect speaks primarily through Twitter. But being able to use smartphones, graphic software, websites, social media, apps, tablets, Windows, Macs and […]
January Book Sale
The MERL shop kicks off 2017 with the traditional January Sale. This is your chance to pick up some fantastic bargains, especially among our wide range of books. None of us know what the internet sensation of 2017 will be. But there is no doubt that the sensation of 2016 was the MERL mousetrap story! […]
Evacuees visiting The MERL
On 28 November 2016, The MERL welcomed seven evacuees and their families to the Museum. The evacuees had agreed to allow the Museum to include their stories in the evacuee interactive and the day was designed to thank all involved for their participation. The day included showing the evacuees the interactive for the first time, […]
Discovering the Landscape: Post-War Landscape Architecture project awarded Academic Engagement Bursary
We are delighted to announce that Amber Roberts has been awarded our Landscape Academic Engagement Bursary. Amber will be using our Michael Brown Collection to analyse key design theories and projects in the development of the profession of landscape architecture, 1945-1975. The project will focus on post-war modernist Britain and the international outreach of British landscape […]