I write, curate, perform, and make ...
Dr Jenna C. Ashton is a Senior Lecturer in Heritage Studies, with a background in artmaking and writing, exhibition curation, creative producing, public engagement, and arts-education. Her multi-method, multimodal creative ethnography and interdisciplinary research focuses on community-based practices, knowledges, and economies (or "living/ intangible" heritages), and critical literacies. Jenna's work sits across cultural analysis, feminist environmental humanities, and critical heritage studies.
In 2017, Jenna was awarded an internationally competitive visiting Global Cultural Fellowship with the “Institute for International Cultural Relations”, Edinburgh University, working with thirty global curators, artists and policy makers exploring cultural exchange for addressing issues of human and environmental rights. She holds advisory and trustee roles in the UK and internationally.
Jenna leads the project, "Community Climate Resilience through Folk Pageantry", AHRC, UK Climate Resilience Programme (2020-2023), and is a Co-I on “Creative Adaptive Solutions for Treescapes of Rivers (CASTOR)”, funded by NERC Future of UK Treescapes programme (2021-2024). Previously, she was a Co-I on project: “Green Infrastructure and the Health and Wellbeing Influences on an Ageing Population (GHIA)”, NERC, Valuing Nature Fund: ref NE/N013530/1 (2016-2020). She is part of the "Cottonopolis Collective", AHRC, ref AH/W009056/1.
Jenna is the founder and Creative Director of the arts and heritage organisation Digital Women’s Archive North (2015 -), and in 2019-2020 in collaboration with women artists, she co-founded the Centre for International Women Artists, a collective artist studio and gallery experiment in Manchester, UK. Jenna is also 1/4 of artist collective InsideOutsideHouse (2018 -).
Jenna teaches across critical heritage studies theory and practice, heritage policy and management, landscapes and environmental humanities, intangible cultural heritage, heritage and conflict, critical and creative ecologies, art curation, museums studies and practice, arts and the city, and contemporary arts.
https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/jenna.ashton.html
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