This thesis examines the role and work of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland from a geographical perspective in the period 1908 – c.1975, with especial reference to the historical geographies behind the production of the national inventory of Scotland’s ancient and historic built monuments. The thesis examines the sites of practice where the Commission produced the national inventory to explore the doing of the inventory. Fieldwork is a central concern of the thesis. Attention is paid to the spatial aspects of Commission’s work both in the field “out there” and in the office “in here”. The thesis discusses the methods and technologies which fostered the development of fieldwork practices rooted in the office and in the field. The Commission was always ‘doing fieldwork’ and this thesis brings into focus the relationship between the different spaces and places where the Commission undertook what might be labelled as work in the field. The thesis is comprised of nine chapters. An introduction and literature review are followed by an examination of the history of antiquarianism relevant to the establishment of the Commission. A further two chapters provide an overview of the Commission’s history, arranged chronologically, and its archive, understood in relation to relevant archival theory. Three chapters consider the development of the Commission with particular attention paid to fieldwork techniques and methods, the development of rescue archaeology, and the associated technologies which facilitated the Commission’s work within a rescue paradigm before turning, finally, to examine the Commission’s database, Canmore. Examining the Commission in this manner has drawn attention to the ways in which geographers and others conceive of fieldwork and how the development of the Commission was inherently linked to ways of doing work in the field. Through examining the history and geography of the Commission’s work the concern of this thesis is to study how ‘antiquarian research’ was carried out in the field “in here” and “out there” simultaneously. The thesis suggests that narrow definitions of fieldwork overlook the nuances of how ancient Scotland was revealed through suites of different practice. The thesis argues that more fine-grained approaches to understanding the how of the doing of fieldwork might lead to reconceptualisation of the place of work in the field, recognising that different practices helped constitute both ancient and historical Scotland as the object of the Commission’s work and the Commission itself.

This thesis considers the relationship between practices, communities and continuity in intermittent organisational arrangements. Cultural festivals are argued to offer one such particularly rich and nuanced research context; within this study their potential to transcend intermittent enactment emerged as a significant avenue of enquiry. The engagement of organisation studies with theories of practice has produced a rich practice-based corpus, diverse in both theoretical concerns and empirical approaches to the study of practice. Nevertheless, continuity presents an, as yet, under-theorised aspect of this field. Thus, the central questions of this thesis concern: the practices that underpin the enactment of festivals; the themes emerging from these practices for further consideration; and relationships between festivals and the wider context within which they are enacted. These issues were explored empirically through a qualitative study of the enactment of a community-centred film festival. Following from the adoption of a ‘practice-lens approach', this study yielded forty-eight practices, through which to explore five themes emerging from analysis: Safeguarding, Legitimising, Gatekeeping, Connecting and Negotiating Boundaries. This study revealed an aspect of the wider field of practice that has not yet been fully examined by practice-based studies: the cementing or anchoring mechanisms that contribute to temporal continuity in intermittent, temporary or project-based organisations. The findings of this thesis suggest a processual model, which collectively reinforces an organisational memory that survives periods of latency and facilitates the re-emergence of practice, thus potentially enabling organisations to endure across intermittent enactment and, ultimately, transcend temporality and ephemerality. The themes examined and insights offered in this thesis seek to contribute to: practice-based studies and film-festival studies; forging a new path linking these two disciplines; and generating both theoretical and practical insights of interest to festival organisers and stakeholders of project-based, temporary or intermittent organisational arrangements.

Onward Bound: -- the first 50 years of Outward Bound Australia traces the founding and development of this unique, Australian, non-profit, non-government organisation from its earnest beginnings to its formidable position today where it attracts some 5,000 participants a year to its courses. The project included interviewing hundreds of people and scouring archives and public records to piece together a picture of how and why Outward Bound Australia (OBA) developed -- recording its challenges and achievements along the way. A mediated oral history approach was used among past and present OBA founders, staff and participants, to gather stories about their history. This use of oral history (in a historical book) was a way of cementing the known recorded facts and adding colour to the formal historical outline, while also giving credence to the text through the use of 'real' people's stories.