The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Daniel's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Daniel
Research leadership, world-class research, innovative industry-facing teaching and consulting across cultural heritage, digital heritage, buildings history and architecture theory: interconnecting interests in everyday architectures; occupation of space and architectural experience; place and place-making; urban and infrastructure heritage and histories; empire and colonial-postcolonial architectures. Current heritage projects include Project Lead in a transdisciplinary, multi-institution study of postcolonial spatial practices and material culture within the Indigenous Cree communities of Hudson Bay, Canada (£800,000 AHRC bid in preparation to submit Jan 2025) and Co-Lead in an international Leverhulme Centre bid for ‘Digital Vernacular Architecture Futures’ (£9.6 million - £800, 000 to Co-Lead; 2nd round submitted May 2nd 2024). I also look outside of Architecture to connect the built environment and built heritage to people and place through interdisciplinary funded projects such as Health, Social Sciences, Digital Design and Marine Science. This year I am engaged with an AHRC Impact Accelerator Fellowship with the National Trust, re- thinking curatorial approaches to cultural heritage at sites throughout the UK, and bringing heritage expertise to the £1.2 million ESRC-funded ICONIC Project exploring the health benefits of heritage sites for excluded groups through remote digital access (extended reality). My research in architectural history focusses on the role of space, place and material culture in the creation, maintenance and expansion of the British Atlantic World, 1650- 1850. Publications include: Inns and Empire (OUP, 2024); Eighteenth-Century Architectures (OUP, 2025); Inner Empire: Architecture and Empire in the British Isles with G. A. Bremner (MUP, 2024); Building the British Atlantic World with Bernard L. Herman (UNC Press, 2016), winner of the Allen G Noble Book Prize; and, The Highland House Transformed: Architecture and Identity on the edge of Britain (EUP, 2009), Scotsman History Book of the Year. I also write on architectural theory, especially everyday spaces and the use and experience of buildings, including Architecture, Design and the Vernacular (Bloomsbury, forthcoming) 'Concepts and Approaches' in the Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Bloomsbury, 2022); Consuming Architecture with Marcel Vellinga (Routledge, 2014); 'Concepts of the Vernacular' with Robert Brown in the SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory (SAGE, 2012). Following undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of St Andrews, I worked for Historic Environment Scotland before moving into academia with a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dalhousie University, Canada. I joined the University of Plymouth in 2005. At the University of Plymouth I am Faculty Lead for Heritage, Culture and Digital as well as co-lead of the History and Heritage Research Group. I teach heritage and material-spatial history across the School of Society and Culture. I am also programme leader for MA Heritage Theory and Practice and director of the spin-out heritage consultancy, Plymouth Heritage Praxis. Plymouth Heritage Praxis maintains a portfolio of projects increasingly focused on the health and wellbeing benefits of the historic environment for different groups and communities including young adults, older adults, LGBT and asylum seekers. PHP works through grant-funded partnerships and contract research with the heritage sector. Current partners include the National Trust, Historic England, Dartmoor National Park, The Box, National Marine Park and Powderham Castle.Teaching
Programme Lead- MA Heritage Theory and Practice, 2018 –
- MRes Architecture, 2008 - 14
- ‘History and Heritage’, BA History & Art Historyu (Year 1 core module), 2018 -
- ‘History and Heritage: Legacies of Empire’, BA History, Art History and English (Year 2 option), 2018 -
- ‘The British Atlantic World’ (Year 3 option), 2018 -
I have successfully supervised a range of PhD students within the fields of cultural heritage, architectural history and theory and material culture from prison graffiti in Malaysia to female agency in the British country house and the heritage space of rivers.
