Flags and frontiers: Linear monuments research in 2025

Abstract

Providing context and introduction to this seventh volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ), this article reviews the contents as well as select recent related research published elsewhere on linear monuments. The introduction also reviews the Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory’s activities during 2025. The context of Britain’s ongoing public discourse focused on migration and its perceived threats to British and English identities is recognised, with the flag fervour of the summer of 2025 illustrating the ongoing need for academic critiques and comparative research on linear monuments, frontiers and borderlands. Specifically, it argues for the need for resesarch to take into account ephemeral material cultures, signs and symbols as well as monumental architecture in considering how divisions and demarcations are established and perpetuated in landscapes past and present.