Jana Riedel

Profile

I am an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD Candidate, researching Prince Albert and the Great Exhibition of 1851 and its aftermath in the context of Anglo-German cultural relations. I am examining Prince Albert’s working and collecting practices and how these influenced the design of the Great Exhibition, and how the Exhibition, in turn, influenced the collecting practices of the later Victoria and Albert Museum and perhaps in Britain in the wider sense.

Initially, I joined Queen Mary in 2012 as the Manager of the Knowledge Exchange Hub, Creativeworks London, a programme that ran for four and a half years and that facilitated short-term collaboration between the creative industries and academia. During this time, I completed the MA in Anglo-German Cultural Relations in the Department of German at Queen Mary University. From 2016 to 2019, I was the Arts & Culture Manager at Queen Mary while studying for the PhD, for which I am now in Write-up.

Postgraduate Teaching

I gave one lecture and seminar on the module Anglo-German Cultural Relations Past & Present (GER6202) on the topic ‘The Iconic Figure of Anglo-German Transfer: Prince Albert then and now’ over the last two academic years

Research

Research Interests:

• Anglo-German cultural relations, cultural exchange, transfer of culture
• Visual culture, material culture, history of art, history

Publications

Forthcoming publications

• ‘Prinz Albert als deutsch-englischer Kulturtransferant‘, in: Dynastie – Wissenschaft – Kunst. Die Verbindungen der Dynastien Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg und Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha zum Britischen Empire, Friedegund Freitag (ed.) (Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, 2020)
• Eckhard Mönnig & Jana Riedel, ‘Zur Gründung des Herzoglichen Kunst- und Naturaliencabinets in Coburg 1844 – 175 Jahre Naturkunde-Museum Coburg’, Jahrbuch der Coburger Landesstiftung, 2019

Peer-reviewed Articles

• ‘The Chameleon in the Minefield. Alois Brandl’s Negotiations of Anglo-German Cultural Relations in Times of Nationalism and War’, in: Angermion, Vol. 10, De Gruyter, 2017.

Public Engagement

Exhibition

Behind the Scenes – The Untold Stories of Prince Albert’s German Household.

Behind the Scenes was a small photography exhibition that was part of the bicentenary celebrations for Queen Victoria’s and Prince Albert’s births in 1819. The exhibition’s aim it was to shed light on Prince Albert’s German servants, who came with him from Germany in the 1840s. These were people of crucial importance to Albert’s and Victoria’s life and work but were usually forgotten by historiography. The project was a collaboration between the Town of Coburg who initiated the project, gave financial support and produced the materials for the exhibition, the Royal Collection Trust (RCT) that supplied the photographs, Osborne House that agreed to install the electronic version of the exhibition in its Visitor Centre, and the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations at QMUL that facilitated the relevant research.    

The exhibition was displayed in Albert’s hometown Coburg, Germany, on large information boards, installed in retail windows across the town. It was also shown electronically on a touchscreen in the Visitor Centre of Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, UK, until the end of 2019.

This exhibition was generously supported by the Town of Coburg, the Royal Collection Trust and QMUL’s HSS Collaboration Fund.

TV Appearance

Queen Victoria – Doku zum 200. Geburtstag 

I participated in a documentary about Queen Victoria as part of the bicentenary celebrations for Queen Victoria’s and Prince Albert’s births in 1819. I was interviewed as a cultural historian, speaking about Prince Albert, Queen Victoria and the conditions of the people living in London and Britain in the nineteenth century. The documentary was aired on ARTE in Germany and France in May 2019, and later on by ORF in Austria.