Jamie Freeman

Jamie is currently in his final year of research for a PhD in History at the University of East Anglia (UEA). His research considers the role of architecture, art and material culture in shaping how people understand and relate to space.

Whilst primarily grounded in history, his thesis adopts a multidisciplinary approach and includes strong design, architectural and visual elements. Focussed on providing a critical examination of how public spaces were cultivated in an attempt to ease the complex transition of East Prussia from Königsberg to Kaliningrad after World War Two, the thesis documents the architectural visions present in Soviet urban development and considers the impact of changes to the built environment in relation to the process of assimilation by the new settlers toward the wider socialist project.

He was a recipient of a CHASE (Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts, South-East) Studentship, an AHRC-funded studentship for PhD-level study awarded on the basis of academic merit through open competition, and the UEA Leipzig Scholarship for Modern European History.

Over the course of the PhD, he has also delivered numerous international papers, these include:

•’Constructing Socialism: Architectural Visions from a Revolutionary Regime’ – Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, November 2017.
• ‘Lived Realities – Orientation of Place in Kaliningrad’ – ASEEES (Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies), Chicago, November 2017.
• ‘Constructing Identity – Appropriation of Place in Kaliningrad’ - European Cities and Regions in Transition after the Second World War Symposium, University of British Columbia, March 2017, (invited and funded paper).
• ‘Post-WWII Transformations in the Urban Landscape and Identity of East-Central Europe’ - ASEEES, Washington DC, November 2016.

In addition, Jamie teaches on a range of modules at UEA, predominantly related to Modern European History.

Away from his academic work, Jamie recently worked as Curatorial and Research Assistant on the Radical Russia exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. The exhibition contrasted Russian art and life, before and after the Revolution, and demonstrated how in a few short years a new approach to art emerged that exemplified the unity between the written word and the visual arts.

He is too intently involved in the project management of a collaboration with international colleagues in the founding of a cross-institutional and interdisciplinary research collective: Space, Place, Time (www.spaceplacetime.co.uk). The collective works to coordinate pioneering interdisciplinary artistic projects designed to explore the notions of space, place and time in relation to both geographical migration and conceptual borders. Having worked with Nida Art Colony, Lithuania, Art Villa Garikula, Georgia, and the Performing Arts Forum, France – all internationally recognised centres for artistic research – the project focusses on fostering cross-institutional collaboration and enabling the shared exploration of ideas through the promotion of ‘academic generosity’, as well as facilitating research exchange networks across academic institutions. So far, direct outcomes of this research initiative have included exhibitions at the University of Sussex and Nida Art colony, and public presentations at the British Film Institute, the University of East Anglia, and the University of Sussex.