Congratulations to our newest Laidlaw Scholar, Cedric Desenfants

Posted on Wednesday 13 May 2020

York Undergraduate Cedric Desenfants has won the prestigious Laidlaw Scholarship for his research project. The 2020 Laidlaw Scholarship equips self-motivated and ambitious undergraduate students with the knowledge, skills and experience to become leaders in their chosen fields.

From Cedric: 

"My research project aims to develop a documentary exploring the relationship between Prehistoric cave art and modern technologies such as interactive museums and video games. With a focus on parietal art, I wish to explore the many ways we can preserve and save the past from our modern imprint, slowly destroying nature and the archaeology hidden within it: a journey to find resonance between Upper-Palaeolithic caves and our complex modern times with reactive-art as a response to tumultuous worlds.

Ultimately, as an archaeologist filmmaker, my aim is to carry a positive and hopeful message connecting the audience to our universal common ancestry: to what makes us human, creative odd creatures expressing themselves through space and time.

As such, whilst the focus would be primarily drawn onto Prehistoric cave art, I hope to develop this documentary as a pilot for an eventual series to explore parietal art around the world, and how different approaches must be made for different places. I hope to shed light onto more delicate yet critical discussions regarding Indigenous art culturally bound to living cultures, with an identity and a future yet still threatened by socio-political contexts. A journey through Art to connect and heal people."