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Corinne Fowler

@profcorinnefowler

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Prof of Colonial History & Heritage. Next book: The Countryside: 10 Walks Through Colonial Britain (Penguin Allen Lane). Represented by Emma Bal

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What stories might we be walking past without knowing?

On our recent Mosaic Outdoors weekend as part of the @yhaofficial Festival of Walking in Grasmere, Professor led the East India Company Walk, drawing on her book Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain.

Walking between Grasmere and Rydal, we heard about John Wordsworth, William’s brother and an East India Company captain, and the family’s investment in his planned voyage to China.

John died when his ship was wrecked in 1805, before the anticipated profits were realised. His story connects the familiar landscape of Wordsworth, lakes and fells to Britain’s imperial economy and to people and places far beyond the Lake District.

It gave me something to reflect on, particularly in relation to my PhD, which asks how widely known are the histories of racially diverse people in rural Britain.

I found myself thinking about the stories we encounter through walking guides, route descriptions and self guided walk leaflets. We are often told about the views, historic buildings and literary connections. But how much do we hear about the histories of empire, migration, labour and racialised inequality connected to those same places?

We might walk past a country house without learning where its owners’ wealth came from, or through an industrial valley without hearing about the people who produced its raw materials.

For me, this raises questions about who writes these guides, whose knowledge and perspectives shape them, and who is missing. Whose histories are shared? Whose lives are recognised? What are we encouraged to notice, and what remains out of view? Hidden in Plain Sight.

These questions apply across our countryside, coastlines and protected landscapes.

There are practical opportunities here. A short historical note, another stopping point or a link to further reading could help people discover more. Involving people whose histories and perspectives have been overlooked could also change how these stories are researched and told.

My research explores why histories can be known and documented, yet remain largely absent from what visitors encounter. Walking with Corinne was a reminder o

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Oh hello @bhamlitfest 👋 Managed to catch some daytime events & run a lovely writing workshop, with fab participants from all over the world on writing place & ourselves. Wonderful to catch up with @deepa.anappara Rachel Long @shanedwards27 @profcorinnefowler & meet @courttia Kavita Bhanot @carinya.sharples & my excellent workshop participants ✍️ Love of storytelling & books is most definitely alive in Birmingham! Thank you @writingwestmids — and I’m looking forward to speaking at Readers’ Day on Saturday, Oct 24!
#litfest #authorlife #amreading #amwriting #authorsofinstagram

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Walk, Reflect, Connect

Hidden Histories

A wonderful Mosaic Outdoors weekend as part of the YHA Festival of Walking in Grasmere.

Across two walks, we explored the landscapes around Grasmere, Rydal and Ambleside. There was time to enjoy the lakes and fells, develop walking skills, meet new people, share food and create connections.

On Sunday, @profcorinnefowler led our East India Company Walk, drawing on her book Our Island Stories. From Grasmere village and Dove Cottage to the paths around Rydal Water, Corinne added another layer to this familiar landscape. She connected Wordsworth and the Lake District with wider histories of empire, trade, memory and belonging, including John Wordsworth’s life as an East India Company captain.

The weekend reminded us that walking can be about more than reaching a destination. It can help us encounter a place differently, hear stories that aren't always immediately visible, and reflect together on how the past continues to shape the present.

A huge thank you to Corinne for sharing her knowledge so generously, to everyone who joined us and contributed to the conversations, and to @yhaofficial and Outdoor Citizens for supporting the weekend.

Beautiful landscapes, thoughtful conversations, good food and warm company: everything a Mosaic Outdoors weekend should be.

#FestivalOfWalking #YHA #LiveMoreYHA #MosaicOutdoors #OutdoorCitizens Grasmere LakeDistrict HiddenHistories WalkingTogether

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So grateful for the kind words of some amazing people who’ve read #Heiresses - it means a lot. Many thanks to @lucy_worsley @patersondjoseph @anita.anand.official @profcorinnefowler and Octavia Field in @the.tls . If you’re wondering about the choice of music, there is a strong #Austen link - one of the women in the book was Jane Austen’s Barbados-born aunt. The paperback is out in September and available to pre-order now… 🔗 in bio.

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Keeping Memory Alive: How Museums Help Future Generations Remember What They Never Lived — A reflection on Module 1 of TheMuseumsLab 2026 by Dr. Samar El Khamisy

Last week, Module 1 came to a close. In her reflection, @drsamarelkhamisy explores how cultural institutions help future generations understand events they never lived through, ensuring that difficult histories remain a source of empathy, resilience, and shared responsibility rather than silence and forgetting.

💬 "Throughout TheMuseumsLab, I discovered that museums do far more than preserve objects; they preserve humanity's memory.
Listening to experiences from Rwanda, South Africa, and other communities affected by genocide, forced displacement, and colonial histories, I realized that museums can transform painful memories into spaces for dialogue, healing, and learning."

Read the full reflection on our website:
🔗 themuseumslab.org/stories/keeping-memory-alive

Written by:

Dr. Samar El Khamisy · Curator and Archaeologist at the Egyptian Museum – Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities · #TheMuseumsLab Fellow 2026

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Coming up on conversations!
Sunday 24 th May
Ripton 'Souls Liberation ' Lindsay -Ujima Presenter, artistic creative and historian. His journey continues tracing links between his ancestral descendants to modern day aristocracy family. Discussing uncovered history that unite truth and reparative justice for him with links to others who have pathed the way making history as participants in inventions of 20 th century.
Tune in 12-2pm
www.ujimaradio.com /DABLindsay

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Two conversations, two regional contexts, one shared question: how do museums shape the way we understand memory, trauma, and identity? 

On the first day of the online Module 1, the panelists introduced the Fellows to the museum landscapes of the programme’s partner countries: Germany and Rwanda. The two sessions provided historical context while highlighting different institutional approaches to memory, trauma, and identity. 

✦  Panel 1: Complex Histories in Germany with Prof. Dr Sigrid Weigel  ✦

The first session explored the specificities of the German "Erinnerungskultur" in view of the historical cesuras 1945 and 1989. It addressed post-war repression and reparation, including monetarisation, juridification, and the deferral of restitution, so-called “Wiedergutmachung,” often understood as a conversion of guilt into debt.

→  Speaker:  Prof. Dr Sigrid Weigel · Former Director and Senior Researcher at the ZfL Research Center at Leibniz Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung

→  Moderation:  Katja Kaiser  ·  Co-Director of the Center for Humanities of Nature at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin  @mfnberlin

✦  Panel 2: Memory, Museums, and Social Reconstruction in Rwanda with Dr Philibert Gakwenzire  ✦

The second conversation focused on Rwanda, exploring museums and memorial sites as spaces of historical interpretation and social reconstruction. Tracing narratives from precolonial kingdoms through German and Belgian rule to the Genocide against the Tutsi, the session examined how museums address historical continuity and rupture. 

→  Speaker:  Dr Philibert Gakwenzire  ·  Senior Lecturer of History at the University of Rwanda @universityofrwanda

→  Moderation: Injonge Karangwa  ·  Doctoral Researcher at KU Leuven, Co-Founder of Nyanja Lab & Member of #TheMuseumsLab International Academic Committee
@injonge_k

We thank all panelists for their thoughtful contributions to the opening of Module 1!

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💥 it’s been such an intense and truly brilliant three successive days of the paperback book tour, in Oxford, Manchester and London, so I don’t know about you but I am definitely up for the weekend

🙏 thank you so much to all the amazing people who showed up, asked questions, offered answers, and in so many different ways contributed to building communities around museums, monuments, memory — and anti-militarism.

🔥 @drsadiahabib just sent me some snaps of our Manchester event and the amazing reading by @zainabsaidsummat — so here are those pics; but thank you so so much also London, Oxford, and Birmingham last week too. A special thanks to @paulaakpan, to @profcorinnefowler and to @sarahsteinlubrano for those conversations and also to the wonderful @esme.ward.90 —And just to underline, @zainabsaidsummat your poetry was amazing ✨🙏

✨ really looking forward to our Bristol gig at @ebb_bristol on Tuesday 19 May with the amazing @maimusie

💫 still bored? all links to books, talks, audio etc are in my bio 💫💫🔥🔥💯

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💥what an amazing launch for the paperback edition of Every Monument Will Fall at Birmingham University with @theheathbookshop tonight! It was amazing to see the beautiful paperback edition in real life for the first time.

✨Thank you @profcorinnefowler for the wonderful conversation, brilliant to do this in the Arts lecture theatre, next door to the new blue plaque for Stuart Hall, without whose work out understanding of culture would not be what ot is today 🙏

>> LINKS TO THE BOOK/AUDIOBOOK IN MY BIO 💫

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💥 Tomorrow (Thursday), Birmingham!

💫 See you at Birmingham University for the first of my small paperback tour gigs for #everymonumentwillfall — with the amazing @profcorinnefowler and Dr Leire Olabarria and in partnership with @theheathbookshop

🔥 130 tickets gone but still the last few available (it’s free!)

✨ it’ll be an emotional moment for me to see the paperback for the first time! 🙏🙏

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Learn more about the Museum's 2026 exhibition, The Colonial Brontës, on our latest podcast episode with Professor Corinne Fowler! 🎧🩵

Corinne is an Honorary Professor of Colonialism and Heritage at the University of Leicester and she co-authored the National Trust report on its properties’ many links to colonial histories. Corinne is also the author of 'Green Unpleasant Lands' and 'Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain'.

Find out more on Behind the Glass: A Parsonage Podcast! 🎙🌟

#BehindTheGlass #MuseumPodcast #HistoryPodcast #CorinneFowler #Colonialism #Heathcliff #WutheringHeights

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Meet this year's International Academic Committee.

Composed of academics with expertise in fields related to #TheMuseumsLab, the committee is entrusted with the responsibility of providing professional guidance to the programme.

→ 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗮 𝗠𝘂𝗴𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗲𝘇𝗮 · Director & Co-founder IRIBA Center for Multimedia Heritage @centre_iriba · A Franco-Rwandan academic with degrees in Education Studies, Social Psychology, and Political Science. Her research focuses on genocide and extreme violence, particularly through discourse analysis.

→ 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗿 · Honorary Professor of Colonialism and Heritage at the University of Leicester / Freelance author and curator · A public historian who directed the child-led history and writing project 'Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted', co-authored the 2020 National Trust report on its country houses' historical links to the British Empire, and writes on colonial history and heritage.

→ 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝗳𝗮𝘆𝗲 · Honorary Assistant Professor at The University of Hong Kong · A historian of Africa by profession, currently involved in the international scholarly movement examining the repatriation of artworks and objects acquired by European museums during the colonial period. He serves on scientific and academic boards and is engaged in museum-related projects in Ethiopia.

→ 𝗜𝗻𝗷𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗞𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘄𝗮 · Doctoral Researcher at KU Leuven · A Rwandan researcher, cultural practitioner, and global health expert with over a decade of experience across Sub-Saharan Africa, whose work examines links between access to cultural heritage and well-being, with a focus on African museum collections and colonial-era objects.

→ 𝗝𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘀 𝗧𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘂𝘀 · Director of the Berlin-Brandenburg Office for Everyday Culture at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin · He studied and received his PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge. Since 2025, he has been secretary of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.

🔗 Read more about the committee members on our website: themuseumslab.org/institutes/international-academic-committee

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