Congratulations to our newest Laidlaw Scholar, Cedric Desenfants

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."