Joanna Meredith

Joanna Meredith is a doctoral candidate in the Centre for Arts, Memories and Communities, Coventry University. Her PhD research, co-supervised by Professor Juliet Simpson (Coventry University) and Dr Jennifer Alexander (University of Warwick), investigates the reception and reinvention of Coventry’s medieval heritage during the Gothic Revival movement. She is particularly interested in the significance of Coventry’s medieval architectural and visual arts heritage for leading 19^th century architects. For example, her thesis will explore how the ideas of the Nazarene movement shaped Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin’s (1812-1852) treatment of the early 15^th century Doom painting in Coventry’s Holy Trinity Church. In turn, she seeks to develop a new understanding of the Catholic Revival movement in the English Midlands. Ms Meredith is a member of The Pugin Society and the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust.

Before enrolling as a doctoral candidate, she completed an MA in Cultural Heritage Management at the University of York. Her MA dissertation, titled The Adaptive Reuse of Nonconformist Methodist Chapels, was supervised by Dr Katherine Giles. In 2021, she was a conference assistant for a two-day international conference on ‘Emotional Objects - Northern Renaissance Afterlives in Object, Image and Word, 1890s-1920s’ (financially supported by a grant from the Royal Historical Society). She also co-organised a one-day symposium on the topic of ‘Power, Production and Perception: A Reconsideration of Space and the Built Environment’ (funded by the Midlands4Cities Cohort Development Fund).