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The Hidden Exeter App: Walking the Elizabethan city

We are very pleased to share our chat with Professor Fabrizio Nevola and Dr Kate Osborne about the new app to explore Exeter. An innovative way to learn more about our heritage, “Hidden Cities”…

Ever wondered how an app is conceived and can be used to explore the hidden histories of a place? The creators of the Hidden Exeter app have sat down together to discuss their project, explain their approach and show us how it works.

“Hidden Cities” is the result of a three year (2019-22) collaborative research project “Public Renaissance: Urban Cultures of Public Space between Early Modern Europe and the Present” funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA).

Professor Fabrizio Nevola is Director the Centre for Early Modern Studies at Exeter University. In a number of recent research projects that have explored the use of mobile phone apps for different aspects of narrative and history, he has worked with specialists in the field of digital media. Hidden Florence, is a collaboration with industry-leaders in GPS-triggered city audio tours Calvium Ltd, to create an idiosyncratic guide to Renaissance Florence in the form of a mobile phone App. His new book, Street Life in Renaissance Italy, was published by Yale University Press early this month.

Dr. Kate Osborne has worked in museums for over twenty-five years. The last fifteen were spent at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter as Access/Learning & Skills Officer. This included being project lead for the refurbishment of St Nicholas Priory as a Tudor town house, which opened in 2008. Between 2009 and 2016 she completed a spare-time PhD on the ‘middling sorts’ of Elizabethan Exeter. Having left the museum in 2016 she has since developed a new career in charity retail and is also a Post Doctorate Research Fellow at Exeter University, working on a European funded research project to produce a phone app that guides users around the early modern Exeter.

For more information visit: www.hiddencities.eu

You can download the free app for iOS and Android.

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