island conversations
podcast series
Welcome to SICRI’s “island conversations” podcast series.
The aim of these podcasts is to highlight the work of island studies scholars and practitioners who make a significant contribution to islands’ research, arts, and culture landscape.
The podcasts are accompanied by a curated transcript that is edited to read as an independent piece.
"Island Notes" composition in Cretan Flat Mandolin by Christophoro Gorantokaki @"Melody Box"
Welcome to SICRI Island Conversations podcast series! This is Dr Helen Dawson, chair of SICRI and the host of this podcast.
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Today we have with us Dr Sean Dettman. Sean is director of the Jersey International Centre of Advanced Studies and member of the SICRI Advisory Board. He was born and raised in Rockford, IL, and studied history and literature at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, before undertaking his postgraduate work at the School of Advanced Studies at the University of London.
Sean has been involved in establishing JICAS, the Jersey International Centre of Advanced Studies from the very early stages and was appointed director in 2018. He also serves as the programme coordinator for the MSc in Island Biodiversity and Conservation. In addition to his positions with JICAS, Sean lectures at University College Jersey. His main research interests are 20th century US social history and 20th century Anglo-American political and social history.
Sean, welcome, it's great having you in this island conversation. It seems like yesterday that you first contacted me regarding JICAS, but that was four years ago now, during the pandemic, and in that time you have set up several new courses and collaborations. Before we talk about your work with JICAS, let's start on a personal note on your island connections. Tell us, what brought you to Jersey in the first place?
Dr Sean Dettman (credit: JICAS)
Well, hi, Helen! It's very nice to be on the podcast with you, and it does seem like just yesterday that we first got in touch, but we've achieved a lot in that short time. So, like as you say, we'll get to that. What brought me to Jersey is my wife! She was born and raised in Jersey. Her father was an Islander from many generations, originally from French descent and her mother came over after the war, in the immediate post war era, somewhere in the late 1940s. Her father ran a dairy in London and I think like a lot of people in Britain and particularly London, they wanted to get out of the city after the war and kind of start fresh. And so, Jersey has a very thriving dairy industry here and at the time, there were several dairies, so he came over and worked at one of the dairies and then eventually one of the big grocery stores here on Island. Yeah. So that's kind of why I live in Jersey. What brought me to Jersey is my wife and her family's history.
How is life for you on a small island? Can you give us some personal insights and experiences of what life in Jersey is like for somebody from the US?
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, as you said, I was born and raised in Rockford, IL, which is the Midwest and you couldn't get further from a nine by five (miles) island than growing up in the Midwest! I mean, we are literally 1000 miles in any direction from the sea. And, I mean, we had the Great Lakes and of course up in Wisconsin you got, a lot of lakes and etc, but it is quite a difference in terms of living and growing up on this massive continental landscape and then kind of eventually getting to a nine by five island. I mean, it has been a little bit of a slow climatization, a gradual transition.
I left Illinois, when I was about 25 and then, just traveling around Europe, completing my undergraduate education, having studied history and many of it was, about European history and getting there and then eventually finding myself in London, meeting Natasha, meeting my wife and then coming to Jersey. So, there's been a slow kind of gradual acclimatisation to the Island. But the immediate focus or the immediate kind of feel when you get to the Island is the contrast between the land and the sea. For me, it was a real kind of immediate impact on not only my physical presence, but also my mental presence. I never lived that close to the sea and I'm looking out of my office right now doing this interview and I can see the sea. And so that was a real something to get used to both good and bad, I suppose. So yes, I think that's the immediate, the biggest impact it's had on me.​​
Jersey has huge tides, that must have been something strange to get used to as well.
Massive. I mean, so you have all these cultural kind of climatizations to get used to and people are talking down at the pub about TV programs that aired in the 90s and I'm trying really hard to kind of concentrate on those conversations and make the connections so I can actually have something to say, but also like you said, the physical presence of being on an island, you have to adapt to very quickly. And the tide is one of them, because it's, I think it's like the second or third largest tidal range in the world. And so, learning about that both from kind of a cultural perspective, but also kind of a safety perspective - I like to fish - so you can't be out in the tide when it's moving really quickly and stuff like that. So yeah, that in itself is a steep learning curve and something that everybody talks about every single day.
St Ouen Bay at low tide (credit: Helen Dawson)
You really have to get to know the island, also to be safe, to fit in, I suppose.
It's the weather… it's the weather! I mean, like, living on a nine by five island and the contrast between the land and the sea is one thing, but then living on a nine by five island in the middle of the English Channel where you get the four seasons in one day you have this massive tidal range, so every day you're checking the tides, you're checking the weather, you know what to expect this day and you know how to plan accordingly. And then, of course, the multitude of conversations that you have around, the tide and the weather and what's happening on the island today.
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​...And did you have any expectations or preconceptions of what life on the island would be like and did they match up to reality, or how did you find it?
Yes and no. That's a good question, and the answer is yes and no. So, my expectations in coming to Jersey for the first time is really born out of the memory of many people from Britain where we were living in London and their memories of course were in the 70s and the 80s with the bucket and spades holidays. You know, so back in those days before kind of mass tourism and you could get on a plane and go to, guaranteed sunshine in Spain or the Mediterranean, a lot of people came to Jersey for their for their family holidays and so that was built up in my imagination and it does meet those expectations at times, well, you've been here in the summer and when the sun shines and you're out in St. Ouen’s with that big, glorious beach, or you're down in St. Brelade’s, you could be in the Caribbean or you could be in the Mediterranean. You know, these are beautiful images with warm sunny beaches. So yes, in many ways that those expectations, those imaginations were very much met.
Jersey’s dairy and fishing industries are well reflected by the local cuisine (credit: Helen Dawson)
But then in the contrast again, that kind of the impact the geography and the weather has on you, those were something that I did not know about and that I struggle with, you know, in February when you know it's foggy and you feel like you're on a nine by five island in the middle of the English Channel, and you haven't seen the sunshine for six days. You know those. I did not expect that and that was something that I'm still getting used to.
St Brelade’s Bay on a sunny day (credit: Helen Dawson)
OK! And do you feel that there are some characteristics that make Jersey unique or different or is it like the UK? What's your feeling about that?
​Yeah, I think that what is unique about Jersey is not necessarily its geography, it's one of the, multiple of the Channel Islands, and it it's not even unique in its kind of interaction with the sea, as we talked about of course, island and fishing communities etc and these kind of heritage industries have long been established on islands and island communities. The one thing for me, and maybe this is just, falling back on my training or my interests is the social, political context of Jersey. It makes it unique. As you know it's not part of the UK, it's part of the British Isles, but it's a Crown dependency and there are only really three Crown dependencies in the world.
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So the UK has a number of different kind of classifications that it has, the UK, then it's got Great Britain, then it's got the Commonwealth, then it's got the UK Overseas territories, then the Crown dependencies. And there are only three Crown dependencies: it's the Isle of Man, the Bailiwick of Guernsey, and the Bailiwick of Jersey, and that is quite unique in this relationship that it has with the UK in terms of its cultural identification, but then within its own sovereignty, it follows much of the UK’s policies, frameworks etc. and that's understandably so but it has its own unique ability to legislate and levy taxes or not levy taxes, as is the case in the Crown dependencies, that is quite unique. And then, it has the relationship with the Crown rather than with Parliament. As you know, in the Crown dependencies really, it's the crown, the mechanisms, the frameworks, the vehicles behind the scenes of the monarchy that actually appoints the Attorney General, that appoints the Lieutenant Governor, that appoints the Bailiff and these positions are, effectively the main sources of governance on the Island. And so that is quite unique and to get your head around that, for me, coming from, as we'll discuss kind of my own research, it took a while and I'm sure I have not even squared that circle quite yet.
That's fascinating and so the fact that Jersey is an island has played a huge role in its history as you've just explained and let's not forget that it's actually quite close to France and it had close historical, and even in the deeper past, connections, it was physically connected to France, so strong connections to Europe, so perhaps it's this kind of “in-between” position has made it the unique place that it is today.
So, you already mentioned some of your research and interests, so perhaps we can move to that topic now.
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Yeah.
So what aspects of islands or Island Studies have you focused on over the course of your career? And can you tell us about your work in the Channel Islands and maybe introduce JICAS to us as well?
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Yeah, sure, well, first, we'll start with JICAS and, really, it was born out of the idea that there needs to be some coordinated higher education offering provisions on Island.
And so the idea was originally to create this “from scratch” University of Jersey, and that quickly sank. It was a dead and dynamited fish! You know, upon arrival, almost for a number of reasons that we don't even have to get into. But the need that Jersey really had in terms of HE (Higher Education) was research. As we've discussed a lot of times, Jersey is research-hungry and it doesn't really have the vehicles and the mechanisms to undertake that research because of some of the issues that we talked about, already, smallness, lack of resources, it's a nine by five island and 100,000 people. You know, it looks to the UK for all of its policy frameworks, etc.
So you know, and the lack of resources to really undertake some much needed research was really the driving force to refine this idea of the University of Jersey down to the Jersey International Centre of Advanced Studies, which is a postgraduate Research Centre that focuses on islands and island communities, again capturing what Jersey can offer the international academic community. It's not a - you know - from scratch, ground zero, University of Jersey, kind of Oxbridge 2.0 or whatever, that's not what Jersey can offer the world.
La Cotte de St Brelade is a Palaeolithic site in Jersey with evidence of Neanderthal occupation (credit: Helen Dawson)
Its greatest incidental asset is that it's an island and that people can come to Jersey to study about islands and island communities, and so that was kind of the North Star that we kind of followed through the transition of this big grand idea of a university towhat Lee Durrell, who was our chair at the time, used to always say, “small but perfect”, and that's what Jersey can be and that's what JICAS has always kind of aimed to be. So, taking that into consideration, thinking about what Jersey’s contribution to the world of Island Studies could be and mapped against the expertise on the Island at the time we created the MSc Island Biodiversity and Conservation. And again, that was largely under the guidance of people like Lee Durrell, Professor Julia Fa, people who have contributed and helped shape this material directly.
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And so, marrying up the incidental assets of being an island with the expertise on island, that's kind of where we led out. Yes, and so that's kind of got a lot of the thinking on island at the moment and that's where our greatest contribution to the material has been to date.You know we have this Island Research Repository that -you know- has most, if not all of the MSc studies, we have five PhDs at the moment, another one bringing in the new year. Four of the six are focused on Jersey, so starting to build a little bit more of a research agenda and trying to kind of fill those gaps here on Island has, been the work of JICAS to date. But as you know and as we've talked about many times, that's just the jumping off point. Jersey has a rich cultural, social, political, and environmental history, of which you know most of it, has yet to be written. And that's the next phase of what we're going to try to do here at JICAS, and -you know-, like we said, five years ago when I contacted you that was the first step to this and it was always kind of the vision that we would lead out with this immediate expertise mapped against the incidental assets of Jersey being an island and then grow from there and really kind of try to create a place of excellence that will attract people from across the world to study these types of disciplines.
It's a brilliant idea to have these very specialist degrees and research programs based on an island such as Jersey and the MSc in Island Biodiversity and Conservation has been hugely successful and I think one of the great things for the students is that it is an intensive course where they learn about the environmental history of the island through really experiencing this incredible landscape and then through field trips and so on.
So, I think it's a great immersion into this particular aspect of Island Studies and I know there are plans to expand the program to possibly other degrees. And I think that's really brilliant. What would you say were some of the challenges of setting up such a course, or some of the advantages that you found? ​
The challenges was not so much to get private individuals and when I mean by that is mainly people within the wider academic community. You know those people, they get excited about knowledge and knowledge exchange, they get it immediately when we start talking about the importing and exporting of knowledge of islands and island communities, their eyes light up and then they get really excited. So you know, and that led to, the garnering of some cash, which is always helpful and then finding Professor José María Fernández-Palacios to come over from the University of La Laguna, who we work really close with to work with Julia (Fa), to work with Lee (Durrell) in creating that. That was easy, and indeed that was the best part. The challenge was the kind of shopping it around to find an accrediting partner. You know, you think that you spent X amount of pounds putting together a really exciting program, you've hired in experts from across the world to come in and to write the content as we did with the Island History and Heritage, the Island History and Archaeology programs. And that's really exciting.
JICAS students of the MSc in Island Biodiversity and Conservation on a fieldtrip in Jersey (credit: JICAS)
But then, to make other people see sense in what you're trying to do is not always the easiest thing, to download your vision onto other people you need sympathetic and like-minded people to really make that happen. And so that was a little bit of an eye-opening experience, in that you forget and you're forced to remember that these organizations, these institutions are business, and sometimes there are people at these institutions and organizations that don't get as excited about the material that you do and they ask some really important and really, kind of grown-up in the room questions. And so that was that was weird, that was a little bit of a challenge, both kind, in terms of getting it across the line of accreditation, but also then the mindset, you're like, well, why don't you see how great and fantastic this is!
Yeah, but do you think it's to do with, I mean, there is a growing awareness of how important islands are for understanding some of the global climatic and environmental crises that we face at a planetary level and it seems to me that courses such as the MSc in Island Biodiversity and Conservation will really be important in developing and training future generations of scientists and this will then, shape, in turn hopefully environmental policies and so on. So, I think these centres, these island centres - and you've mentioned you have collaborations with other universities on islands - have a really important role to play and we must really hope that they get the attention that they deserve.
Yes. And I think you're right 100%. So it is it is kind of, casting a wide net and pulling in those that get excited about it and that was the beauty of the University of Exeter, they saw sense in it immediately and they are on board, the Department of Health and Life Sciences and Biosciences, they immediately saw sense in this and they immediately understand the significance that islands play within those themes that you just brought up.
So what are your aspirations for the program, do you want to develop into other areas of Island Studies? What's your vision for JICAS?
Yes. So, we have the MSc Island Biodiversity and Conservation and we have, as we said, six PhDs from the 1st of January, we'll have six PhDs, and that's fantastic. We would like to map a new program against that, island sustainability and climate change, island sustainability and global change, that brings in and that somehow kind of marries up the two disciplines of the social sciences with the biological sciences, ecological sciences, because as we've discussed, islands are ideal places for cross disciplinary research and scholarly activity. And so, thinking about how to build a department that looks at kind of the ecological, but also more of the kind of social sciences, that would be fantastic.
JICAS students of the MSc in Island Biodiversity and Conservation on a fieldtrip to the Canary Islands
(credit: Sean Dettman)
And then on the other side, you know completing that old school idea of a liberal arts university, a liberal arts institution. You know the sciences, knowledge works best when the sciences and the humanities work together. And so if we can, if we can set up on the other side of that, so in addition to our kind of physical, biological, social sciences, if we can set up a humanities section that looked at things like island history and archaeology (you know the project that we've been working on, and bringing in the field schools and stuff), looking at the human side of things, you looking at the human stories within island context I think is really exciting.​
JICAS students of the MSc in Island Biodiversity and Conservation on induction day (credit: Sean Dettman)
And then, even to dream bigger, an Island Culture and Aesthetic (degree), you know, that is just a really exciting prospect in my mind, thinking about, how islands are imagined on stage or on the screen or in novels and in paintings, what impact have islands had on Gauguin when he was in Fiji, and that's really exciting stuff, thinking about the wide Sargasso Sea, what role islands play in literature, is a really important question, that is a really important discipline that I think is exciting.​
Absolutely.
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Using islands as the bridge between the sciences and the humanities is a really exciting and a really worthwhile kind of project to put together.
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​Absolutely. I think you've really explained it so well because there is sort of a tendency for the natural sciences and the social sciences, especially in Island Studies, to go their separate ways. So, I think what you're doing through JICAS is to bring together people such as myself, I'm archaeologist, and other colleagues who work in island ecology to have those conversations which we don't normally get the opportunity to have.
No.
And so through these online meetings and the Café Scientifique meetings that you also organize, we've had this opportunity and when you were saying you, you invite experts to come to the Island and they get immediately excited about it, I know that feeling because when I first came to Jersey, I couldn't believe that there was all this kind of potential and we have set up these field schools and so there's a field school in Jersey and there's other field schools that you run in the Canary Islands and so on. It's been really incredible.
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​It has been fun, that's for sure. Yeah.
JICAS students on the Island Archaeology Field School at La Hougue de Vinde in Jersey (credit: JICAS)
Yes, and how has living on an island shaped your own research and what you work on? Tell us a little bit more about that.
Yeah, that's a good question because I haven't had to work really hard at marrying up the two, but it has taken a little bit of time and a little bit of thinking. My research looks at power and how socioeconomic and sociopolitical elites harness their status within societies for the purpose of power, and that can be very much a top- down explanation, but then there are other mechanisms for ground up. You know, harnessing the power to combat that process.
So, that's really important in terms of the understanding of power more widely. And my PhD was looking at how power was used and leveraged in the United States in 1940 and 1941, on the eve of their entry into the Second World War, and what exactly was at play there and what was exactly the outcome of America's entry into the Second World War and the origins of the “Special Relationship”, etc, etc, that kind of formed much of the Anglo American conversation in the immediate post-war era and even to this day. So that's really what gets me out of bed in the morning. You know, thinking about those concepts, in terms of power, and within the same side or the different side of the same coin, I should say, is within my research looking at power and its relationship with democracy promotion. So, as we all know, one side of the conversation with regards to America's entry into the Second World War was to expand the efficacies of democracy. Now, that's a really loose term we all know and everybody has a different understanding of it. But at its core, right, democracy is supposed to be, the most current state of progress within mankind, right?
We organize ourselves and then we put our efforts and our trust into representatives who then kind of take on our wishes, demands and ideas to organize our societies and to administer and govern those societies. And that's exactly how it should be.
And so during this time, there were some voices that demanded America's entry into the Second World War to expand those really core principles of democracy to promote democracy in terms of both the outcomes of the war, but also how that shaped the post-war world, and indeed we see that, we see that those efforts were a little bit fruitful in terms of how the post-war societies organized themselves.
So that's really kind of the core of my research and my research focus.
Sean Dettman interviews Richard Dawkins at the Jersey Festival of Words in 2017, as part of JICAS's partnerships to bring leading academics to the Island (credit: JICAS)
And as we've discussed and as these concepts of “islandness” or how islands are seen as ideal places to look at almost any aspect of human history, almost any aspect of kind of ecological or environmental history, etc, it is really a fascinating concept that I'm slowly coming to grips with. I think, a really good example, an easy example is if we think about Ancient Greece, Classical Greece, right? And immediately after the Greco-Persian wars, this continental power Athens, they harness this alliance through the Delian League which is mainly comprised of islands. And again, the auspice in which they harness this alliance is indeed for the purpose of democracy promotion, as they see it.
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So, that's a really kind of easy way of understanding it and how islands play a role in this and you can have many examples across the course of history and if you come to more recently you think about the islands surrounding the United States in the immediate post-war era, of course, in the Caribbean and elsewhere, they took a hold of this idea of democracy promotion as a means of leveraging their own autonomy, right, their own jurisdictional power for the purpose of their own self organization. And so, there's no coincidence that these islands in the Caribbean or in South America would look to the ideas and the efficacies of democracy promotion to form the basis of their own thinking in a post-colonized world. And so, it's really that interplay between power and democracy promotion that I think is really important, particularly in today's socio political and socio economic environments and then, how these islands in a post-war era have organized themselves according to those concepts but then at the same time mapped against, territorial imagination of which Island Studies is really coming to grips with and so all these other ideas of, connectivity versus insularity, otherness, social, cultural phenomenona etc. So, I think that trying to map the two is interesting and worthwhile and as I start to think about it more and more, a fairly straightforward transition. So that's kind of where I'm thinking about in where my research is leading me at the moment.​
Fascinating and I think sometimes islands, even though they are small, I mean they have, they play a role in history that is so much greater than their actual physical dimensions, and it seems that for better, for worse, sometimes to their advantage, or sometimes really to their disadvantage, they're kind of dragged into the stream of history. In this paper that you wrote for Shima for instance, “Our Island Fortress” and the Sea, do you touch upon some of these issues? Of what Jersey (is it Jersey or the UK in this case?), what features of insularity played into the whole conflict?
Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's again living in Jersey and you cannot escape the occupation of the Second World War to this very day. You know, there was the 75th anniversary and that happened during COVID so now they are planning a big 80th anniversary this year and you cannot escape it, it is within lived memory, lived experience and it still informs a large part of the conversation. They are, people in Jersey really, really think about the occupation of the Second World War and what that meant to not only their identity but everyday lived experience.
So in many ways, we get excited about the rich Neolithic history and the Bronze Age history and all the dolmens and all that, Jersey’s an ideal place to study those things. But for my own kind of research experience, my own research interests you know that is a second side to all of this. So, that really helps me ground my own research interests in terms of what happened here on the Island that which I now live and so thinking about that, the “Island fortress and the Sea” was a propaganda campaign that the UK adapted, and really looked to their insularity as a means of combating the possibility of a cross-Channel invasion in 1940 and 1941. And the use of this imagery and language, of being an island protected by the Channel, not only from, you know, the jackboots of Nazi forces, but historically as well, Napoleon, for example, failed to take the Island because of this great divide.
So, the insularity that that provide, the protection that that insularity provides was really captured and harnessed for the purpose of this propaganda campaign, which people really bought into. It's something that plays on not only the rich history of the green rolling fields of the hinterland of Britain, but also how those historical or those cultural memories and imaginations were going to help them, survive this, what was, can only be described as this looming, possibility of a Nazi occupation invasion, you know?
So, I think that it was really interesting for me to kind of for the first time marry up those two concepts and produce, you know, somewhat of an analytical framework to start working with. It was really interesting, really fascinating stuff, you know to get down into the archive and see how that that works and then there's a lot of work around that within Jersey as to in terms of the insularity and the connectivity.
Propaganda poster (1940) (The National Archive, INF 3/127) (credit: Dettman 2023)
German bunker in the rock of St Catherine, reused by Jersey Turbot fish farm (credit: Helen Dawson)
If you think about the insularity that Jersey has been afforded over the years for various reasons of Napoleonic ambitions, and the forts and everything that they've kind of relied upon, to remain somewhat sovereign or unoccupied. But then its connectivity to the UK, so when those occupational forces did arrive to the Island, there was a massive evacuation effort from Jersey, where half of the Island left for the UK, and that connectivity. So again, the ideas of insularity and connectivity of island life come immediately into play with these kinds of historical epochs that is within living memory. So that you have multiple kind of historical documents, historical pieces of evidence, you know, to fill your toolkit with.
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Just walking around in Jersey or travelling around the Island, you see all this history, it's incredible. I mean, you mentioned the forts and there's of course the German installations, and there's all the medieval and early historic and then prehistoric sites, which are incredible. And I think it's because the island is small that you really get this feeling of this history being concentrated and amplified, and you really appreciate how many layers, how many different people have come through the island and it really encapsulates and captures that history so clearly.
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Island history compressed in one place: La Hougue Bie is a Neolithic passage grave, the mound was later surmounted by a medieval chapel and dug into by a German bunker (credit: Helen Dawson)
And it serves as, it kind of comes at those geographical crossroads of Northwest Europe and Southeast Britain that has been in play for, for thousands and thousands of years, Stewart Needham’s “pulses across the Channel”, that is a fantastic title, to capture those kind of imaginations of people moving back and forth for thousands and thousands of years and how the Channel Islands serve as the crossroads of those kind of interactions, I think is really a real rich source of a number of different type of projects and studies.
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Also, in the present day, because I'm always fascinated by the recent immigration of people from the island of Madeira to Jersey so there is still this kind of mobility and connections going on between Islanders across the world and I feel that really through JICAS, Jersey has become even more connected through the world of Island Studies to all sorts of other places and people all over and perhaps now is a good moment to mention that the conference that you're going to host next year maybe tell us a little bit about that?
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Yes. Well, I mean you, you probably know as much or more about it than I do.
Just giving your kind of long history with all these organizations, but it is really kind of the culmination of a number of different anniversary celebrations, birthdays within the wider world of Island Studies. So, I think the oldest one is the Island Studies Journal is turning 25 this year. I think that is on the cards. And then Shima is turning 20. The Small Islands Culture Research Initiative is also turning 20.
You know, and we just had our 5th birthday in June. So again, ostensibly, it's a reason to have a nice party.
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Brilliant!
And why not? You know, that's always on the cards.
Party on an island, the best!
Yeah, exactly. And so, I think, that was kind of the idea is that we're going to harness all of the good work that's been done but then hopefully map what comes next. And I think that's what's really exciting in terms of the conference itself. You know the purpose of the conference is this, hopefully it's we can look back at it and see as a little bit of a turning point or, a jumping off point to the to the next phase of “nissology” or what Island Studies means to the world. And it is really quite an honour and a privilege that community, kind of chose us and chose Jersey as a place to host at the very least those parties in those kinds of celebratory points that are absolutely imperative along the timeline along the road map you have to pause and take stock and celebrate your achievements. I 100% agree that that's really the core purpose. But again, hopefully we can kind of map out a bit of a vision to move forward, with a big tide and a strong wind, JICAS can help play a role in that,next 25, 30 years.
Absolutely. I think the reason why the conference is taking place in Jersey is exactly because JICAS has played such an important role in the last five years in promoting Island Studies and bringing together some of these organisations, which sometimes tend to be or can be a little bit insular and not talk to each other, but now they're really coming together to map the future of Island Studies together.
So, thank you so much, Sean. It has been really a pleasure to talk to you and I look forward to seeing you in in Jersey at the conference!
So, thank you for joining us today.
My absolute pleasure.
Thanks for having me, Helen.
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Jersey Island (credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Europe-Jersey.svg/1024px-Europe-Jersey.svg.png)
References
​Dettman, S. (2023). “Our Island Fortress” and the Sea: The threat of a cross-Channel Nazi invasion and the maritime traditions that helped save Britain, 1940–1941. Shima, 17(1), 173–191.
Island Archaeology Field School - Jersey
https://www.jicas.ac.je/island-arcaheology-jersey
Island Research Repository​
https://www.islandrepository.ac.je/
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Master of Science, Island Biodiversity and Conservation
https://www.jicas.ac.je/course-overview
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Needham, S.P. (2000). ‘Power Pulses Across a Cultural Divide: Cosmologically Driven Acquisition Between Armorica and Wessex’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 66,151–207.
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For further information see:
https://www.jicas.ac.je/sean-dettman
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