Stories of Spoil is a social history research project exploring the Channel Tunnel, run by Kingston University in collaboration with Dover Museum and Bronze Age Boat Gallery and the White Cliffs Countryside Partnership at Samphire Hoe.

The Channel Tunnel represents an important part of the UK’s past, present, and future identities. Drawing on a range of research methods from archaeology, art and design, geography, and history, we are collecting personal accounts from Channel Tunnel workers and local residents to highlight the national and international social and cultural significance of the building of the tunnel. This material will be developed in partnership with communities in East Kent to create a permanent virtual archive.

Adit A1 Channel Tunnel. Photograph taken during the initial construction phase of the Channel Tunnel at Shakespeare Cliff, Dover in 1988. Two engineers carrying out inspection of spoil conveyor in Adit A1. Attribution: Copyright Jeff Lewis and licensed for reuse under CC BY-SA 2.0 source

Farthingloe Workers Camp in the late 1980s. Attribution: Copyright Dover Museum

For enquiries, please contact Project Lead Dr Leah Fusco l.fusco@kingston.ac.uk

Our interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, designers, geographers, and historians have developed research methods to collect personal accounts from Channel Tunnel workers and local residents. These range from verbal description, speculative drawing, and AI-generated image-making, to sourcing historic artefacts, archival film making, and creative cartographies.

Our two areas of focus include ‘Place and Space’ and ‘Objects and People’. Across these themes, we have designed walking tours to evoke memories and prompt storytelling, interacted with collections and archives to stimulate discussion, and facilitated mental mapping to reimagine and reconstruct movement and activity. Narratives shared vary from anecdotal and informal to addressing broader issues such as the migration of people and materials.

Chalk carved books, souvenirs of the 1880–1882 Channel Tunnel attempt, Dover Museum and Bronze Age Boat Gallery (image: Lara Band)

Channel Tunnel construction site, 1992. This shelf was built from tunnel spoil, and large parts of it were then used as the principal English depot for continued work. The tunnel was opened two years later, and most of this area was then landscaped into a nature reserve called Samphire Hoe. Attribution: Copyright Robin Webster and licensed for reuse under CC BY-SA 2.0 source

Samphire Hoe (image: Rachel Gannon)

Lara Band

I am an archaeologist, a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Canterbury Christ Church University and a Researcher at Bangor University on the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) funded project ‘Unpath’d Waters’. I am interested in connecting past and present through transdisciplinary collaboration, exploring this extensively as the East Kent Coast Discovery Programme lead archaeologist for the national public archaeology project CITiZAN (Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network) (2016-2022). I am a co-editor of Post Medieval Archaeology and an editorial board member for the CHAT (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory) BAR Publishing book series.

Grace Conium Parsonage

I am an AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) funded PhD student at Canterbury Christ Church University, in collaboration with the Museum of London Archaeology. My work considers the impacts of community archaeology within coastal East Kent. I am an Assistant Editor with the Society of Post Medieval Archaeology. Previously, I worked as a Research Assistant at the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts & Health, evaluating eco-therapy programmes.

Dr Mireille Fauchon

I am an illustrator and researcher. I am lecturer in Interdisciplinary Image Practice for BA Illustration and Visual Media, University for the Arts London. My specialisms include experimental communication, social history, archival interpretation, and living heritage. I write critically about contemporary illustration practice and am co-author of ‘Illustration Research Methods’ (2021) and author of ‘Illustration, Narrative and the Suffragette: An Illustrative Enquiry’ (2024), both published by Bloomsbury Academic.

Dr Leah Fusco (Project Lead)

I am an artist and researcher and Associate Professor in the Department of Illustration Animation at Kingston University. My interests centre on geographic and historic subject matter in place research, exploring the use of mapping, narrative, and imaging technologies. I have worked across publishing, research, exhibition, and public engagement, collaborating with a range of partners in the cultural sector. In 2021, I received a PhD in design practice from Kingston University, funded by the London Doctoral Design Centre and the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council).

Rachel Gannon

I am an illustrator, educator, researcher and Associate Professor at Kingston University where I hold the position of Head of School of Design. I am interested in illustration research methodologies and their potential for inter- and trans- disciplinary application, culminating in the co-authored publication, ‘Illustration Research Methods’ (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). I am associate editor for the Journal of Illustration, sit on the board of directors for the Association of Illustrators and a co-founder and director of Illustration Educators.

Dr Mary Kelly

I am a historical and cultural geographer based at Kingston University. I am interested in people’s relationship with place and have recently worked on an AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) funded project ‘Once upon a Time and Place: Story Maps of Climate Change’ which involved working with young people, although I like working with all age groups. I am also interested in identity and belonging and the various ways that people articulate that, be it though clothes, food, writing or storytelling.

Paddy Molloy

I am an illustrator and educator and currently Head of Department of Illustration Animation at Kingston University. My practice engages place to locate and activate images. Crossing Time for House of Illustration used King's Cross as a dynamic archive, reinterpreting place. Curating ‘Marking Domains’, I explored domestic and public boundaries for illustration. I have also collaborated in theatre, devising narrative and constructing visuals for the National Theatre Studio, Barbican, and Young Vic.

Dr Jack Newman (Project Co-Lead International)

I am a Leverhulme Funded fellow at the University of Antwerp in the Centre for Digital Humanities and Literary Criticism where I am completing a project entitled ‘Algorithmic Autodetection of Anticorruption Practices’. Previously, I was the Royal Historical Society’s Centenary Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, and I received my PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Kent. My interests cover digital methods, medieval legal history, and governance studies. I am a co-convener of the Digital History Seminar.

Europa

Our visual identity and website have been designed by the graphic design studio Europa. Europa have a particular interest in architecture, urbanism and the role that graphic design can play in a place’s identity.