Curious encounters at Ballast Hills Burial Ground: Exploring +40,000 lives through archival material and community research by Dr Myra Giesen

Ballast Hills Burial Ground in Newcastle upon Tyne contains the remains of more than 40,000 people buried between the late seventeenth century and 185

11th March 2026, 12-1PM, King George VI Building, Lecture Theatre 6

Speakers: Myra Giesen, Newcastle University   

Ballast Hills Burial Ground in Newcastle upon Tyne contains the remains of more than 40,000 people buried between the late seventeenth century and 1853, many excluded from, or choosing burial beyond, the Anglican parish system. This seminar presents the Ballast Hills Burial Ground project as an AHRC Curiosity Award that treats curiosity as an active research method rather than a preliminary impulse. The talk brings together three integrated strands of enquiry. Archival research draws on burial registers, maps, newspapers, and institutional records to reconstruct marginalised lives and burial practices. Material research includes geophysical survey, gravestone recording, spatial analysis, and evidence of reuse and erasure, approaching the site as a layered and altered material archive. Community research works with volunteers, descendants, and local groups to shape questions, interpret evidence, and address ethics of care, representation, and knowledge generation through engagement. Together, these approaches reveal Ballast Hills as a site of ongoing encounter where evidence, place, and community knowledge intersect, challenging assumptions about death, belief, exclusion, and urban history. The seminar also reflects on the challenges of sustaining curiosity-led research beyond discovery, and on opportunities to analyse findings, extend the approach, and carry results forward through engagement-led, project-based learning and future research.