[5] Having joined what was then the School of World Art Studies and Museology (now the School of Art, Media and American Studies) at UEA in 1976 under the deanship of Andrew Martindale, whose obituary Heslop penned in 1995,[6] Professor Heslop lists his overarching interest as being "in making and its place in human culture.
Humans use objects of all kinds (natural and manufactured) for practical purposes but also to structure understanding and identities"...and also in "analysing the relationship between people and things, and the role of imagination in the creation and reception of artefacts".
[4] In 2011, Sandy Heslop curated the exhibition Basketry: Making Human Nature at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.
[7] In the 1990s, Heslop was one of a number of researchers who developed the field of castle studies to address how the structures, especially great towers (also referred to as keeps), reflected their patrons' status.
[11][12] He is also working on a study of St Anselm's art patronage at Canterbury, 1093-1109,[13] and related imagery such as the paintings in the Chapter House of Worcester Cathedral.