Our MOOC (free online maritime archaeology course) film maker, Joe Brett, has been nominated for the British Universities Film and Video Council Learning on Screen Awards for the Courseware and Curriculum In-House Production section for ‘Medieval Seafaring’.

The short video on ‘Medieval seafaring and shipbuilding‘ presented by Prof Jon Adams and starring some of our recent Masters graduates wielding adzes and axes was shot at Bucklers Hard, Beaulieau last spring.

brett nomination

Medieval Seafaring video up for BUFVC award.

Jesse Ransley


My work centres on ethnographies of seafaring and oceans, particularly of the Indian Ocean past and present. I study the history and material culture of south Asian seafaring - from traditional boatbuilding and watery landscapes to lascars and piracy (and the politics and ethics of maritime archaeological heritage management). I am interested in the embodied knowledges of seafaring, the materiality and temporality of oceans and the larger philosophical question of how we imagine and understand maritime space. Or, as it was recently put to me: 'you do bodies on boats, don't you?' Which is definitely true. Boats. People. Water.


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