Voices of Authority: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Democratisation of Heritage Narratives in York’s Urban Landscape, 2014-2018

Heritage, by its nature, is a multidisciplinary practice and thus has no singular defining academic approach. This thesis takes a mixed methods approach to investigate the utilisation and formation of heritage narratives within an urban context. To ground this work, the thesis utilises a case study of the city of York, England, to explore the variety of mechanisms and processes used across varying levels of society to construct historical narratives. This research looks to decentre and disrupt existing ‘official narratives’ produced and supported by city institutions by investigating alternative narratives and approaches. As such, the thesis formulates a broad understanding of the current forms of governance within the city, primarily the York Civic Trust and York City Council, to utilise the material culture of York through its archaeological finds and architecture in order to market an exported tourist narrative of York. Contrasting this more traditional interpretation of heritage within the urban context, the thesis draws on more grassroots and bottom-up approaches of heritage engagement at both a community and individual level as a form of democratised engagement. As such, approaches towards constructing and selling an official heritage narrative for the city’s heritage are juxtaposed with discussions of community-led performances, social media-based forms of collection nostalgia and the practice of urban exploration. Underpinning this examination is a core investigation of the methodological approach to studying these heritage narratives. The thesis thus advocates incorporating more person-centred emotional data in analysing public participation in heritage and, consequently, in helping to further the development of heritage studies more broadly as a multidisciplinary field.