School of Humanities
c.j.bergin@brighton.ac.uk
I am a literary and cultural historian. My work is interdisciplinary and my primary research is concerned with African American and Caribbean literature, culture, history and memory. My current research focuses on African American anti-colonial thought and traces the complex formations of internationalism which proliferate in the black radical press in the 1920s and 1930s. Despite or because of, the complexities of negotiating ‘race’, class and colonialism, the black press of the period gives us access to an historically specific attempt to create a ‘race’/class politics attuned to the challenges of confronting racism of the USA and beyond. More broadly, I am interested in how we might understand anti-colonial and anti-racist literary and cultural history in relation to concepts on internationalism and solidarity.
School of Humanities
D.Carpenter@brighton.ac.uk
My research deals with memory and identity, with a focus on representations in the arts and in discourse. My work has appeared in French, francophone and Arab studies journals. I have published my first literary text in France and Tunisia in 2013; the book was short-listed for the ‘Fetkann! 2013’ award in France in the category 'Narratives from the South, heritage of humanity'. My current interests are in photography and narratives from Arab women writers. I am currently putting together elements for a book and a photo exhibition about women from Tunisia who write/make books.
School of Environment and Technology, College of Life, Health and Physical Sciences
L.Dawney@brighton.ac.uk
I am a cultural and political theorist whose research interests include geographies of affect and embodied practice, landscape, experience and subjectivity, Spinoza and new materialist theory, and emergent forms of authority. I have as written a number of articles on these subjects, and a co-edited book on authority and experience. I am currently developing research on figures of authority in contemporary culture, looking at the production of authority through practices of testimony, and editing a book on the idea of the commons.
School of Environment and Technology, College of Life, Health and Physical Sciences
P.M.Gilchrist@brighton.ac.uk
My research is concerned with the cultural politics of people-environment relations. I have an active interest in the history of sport, leisure and popular culture. My current research engages with the ‘participatory turn’ in social scientific and humanities-based research, through co-designed and co-produced community histories (in the context of food growing communities). I am also undertaking a biographic and literary recovery of an ancestor who was a labouring-class poet and songwriter (www.bardoftyneside.info) and through this project I hope to progress research into the historical geographies of British literary heritage. These research foci are fundamentally concerned with how we narrate and place life and community stories.
School of Humanities
A.GrantFerguson@brighton.ac.uk
I work in the field of early modern English literature and its afterlives, especially Shakespeare in performance and cultural contexts (particularly the First World War, counter-cultural Shakespeare, all-female Shakespeare performance, Shakespeare and women's suffrage), literary commemoration and the posthumous, particularly in relation to early modern women’s writing.
School of Humanities
A.N.Hammond@brighton.ac.uk
I am a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Brighton. My research focuses on Cold War literature, post-1945 British fiction and postcolonial writing and theory, all of which entails the analysis of literary responses to history. I am the author of numerous articles and books, including British Fiction and the Cold War (2013), Global Cold War Literature (edited, 2012), British Literature and the Balkans (2010) and The Debated Lands: British and American Representations of the Balkans (2007).
School of Humanities
T.Huzar@brighton.ac.uk
School of Education
h.morris@brighton.ac.uk
I am an established medical historian currently researching the highly complex relationship between the military and civilian population of eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain with emphasis on the development of preventative health in the period prior to the reforms of the post Crimean period. This remains an area which has to date attracted little in-depth analysis and therefore has been significantly misunderstood particularly in terms of identifying shared concerns relating to the nature of illness and health. I also maintain a general interest in establishing medical history within the wider field of medical humanities and the opportunities this creates in understanding the nature of illness from a wide range of accounts and interpretations.
School of Humanities
A.Mousoutzanis@brighton.ac.uk
I am a senior lecturer in Film and Screen Studies at the University of Brighton. I have taught and researched on the relations between screen media, trauma theory and memory studies. Specific areas that I have focused include: the ways in which screen media represent, and essentially construct, collective memories and historical traumas; debates on the alleged traumatic effects of the media that accompany every emerging screen technology; the importance of the very process of mediation for practices of commemoration and memorialising; representations of trauma in popular media genres, such as the Gothic and science fiction - specifically the ways in which popular fictions of apoclaypse serve as sublimated representations of historical traumas. I am currently involved in the organisation of a symposium on Media and Nostalgia, which will lead to a special journal issue on the topic.nostalgia studies).
School of Humanities
A.Pollen@brighton.ac.uk
My research covers a range of territories across cultural histories of photography, design and dress, historical methodologies and pedagogies and Mass Observation. My current focus is on the art and design history of protest in interwar Britain. My work has appeared in historical and sociological journals as well as in art and design publications and makes a natural fit with the broad interests of the Centre, while also bringing a distinctive set of tools and knowledge from visual and material culture.
School of Humanities
r.k.searle@brighton.ac.uk
I am a researcher who is primarily interested in the ways in which the study of the past can be used to make critical interventions in the politics of the present. I enjoy working in an interdisciplinary way and am excited by the possibilities offered by other disciplines to enrich historical practice. My current research is on the history of the housing crisis. Previous research projects have included the politics of numbers, the representation of the experience of modernity and the relationship between propaganda and experience in the Second World War.
School of Humanities
A.Virkar-Yates@brighton.ac.uk
Aakanksha Virkar Yates is a lecturer in Literature working on late nineteenth century and modern British literature. She has recently begun work on a project on 'Literature, Music and Conflict' during the interwar and Second World War period. The project investigates the relationship between literary imagination, memory and music, in the context of conflict. A particular focus is the influence of Beethoven on modern British literature and the interplay of aesthetics, music and politics in these literary works. This project is supported by a University of Brighton 'Rising stars' award 2017-18.
School of Media
J.Winckler@brighton.ac.uk
A key aspect of my research involves working with archival traces, Making Memory Visible/ Visualizing Memory. Over the past ten years, my research has investigated archival traces within the context of collective memory and migration narratives. One of my key research questions probes how neglected archival sources can reveal forgotten histories of great significance to our understanding of the present. Applying a creative and interpretive photographic approach, using photographs as tools to think about historical and cultural experience, multiple articulations of memory and meaning are expressed.
School of Media
a.wincott@brighton.ac.uk
I am interested in the uses of the past – especially heritage - in discourses of alternative consumption. My work has critiqued the politics of frugal foodyism in the lifestyle media, which celebrates ‘real’ food as a means to live with and even thrive under austerity, and the rise of ‘heritage’ vegetables in the UK. I am currently working on a project to explore the mobilisation of ‘heritage’ in urban regeneration projects in the post-industrial north of England, producing an augmented reality heritage trail app. I also work with Hastings Bites Back community researchers and artists, piloting the use of arts methods and new technologies to map historic food production and stimulate thinking about the future of food in the town. I am very interested in exploring the role of heritage in regeneration and gentrification in future research projects.
School of Humanities
C.Wintle@brighton.ac.uk
My research focuses on the histories of museums, objects and collections, and how they intersect with the politics of empire, nationalism and decolonisation. In much of my work I use a focus on material culture and its institutions to examine ‘hidden histories’, since the facility to leave a material mark on the world is not subject to the same class, gender and ethnicity restrictions that dictate opportunities to contribute to written records. I am also interested in how people support and challenge political and social frameworks through making, collecting and display, and conversely, how objects themselves work as crucial gauges, microcosms, and agents of political change. My geographical focus is on the UK and India, and relations between the two countries at the level of individuals, institutions, communities and governments.
Helene Marie Abiraad
H.Abiraad@brighton.ac.uk
Locating narratives of memory in social activism in post-war Lebanon.
My research focuses on the forms taken by social activism in dealing with the past and addressing unresolved legacies of the civil war (1975-1990) in Lebanon. With a focus on three dimensions of memory (personal, collective and as an outcome of groups’ actions), objects, artefacts and pictures, this project seeks to understand the roles of memory narratives in shaping activists’ involvement in social actions, impacting the state's narratives, as well as those of the Lebanese population at large. This project is fully funded by TECHNE/AHRC and the University of Brighton.
Ian Cantoni
I.Cantoni2@brighton.ac.uk
Camp de Rivesaltes: A Topography of French Cultural Memory
I am holder of a fully funded doctoral studentship awarded by the AHRC/TECHNE consortium in 2014. My research concentrates on the relationship between memory of the Second World War and decolonisation in contemporary France. My project is site-based, focusing on the Rivesaltes Memorial Museum, a site of internment throughout France's bloody 20th Century. Drawing on methods from a wide range of disciplines, my research will interrogate how the museum conveys the interlocking histories and memories of Vichy, the Holocaust and the Algerian War and how this impacts upon French identity today. Through archival research, participant observation and interviews I will develop an understanding of how interpretations of past conflict impact upon present discourse in French society.
Frances Casey
f.casey@brighton.ac.uk
I am a TECHNE AHRC funded doctoral student, awarded in 2015. My research examines the role of needlecrafts in Britain during the First World War in shaping, challenging and articulating gendered and social identities. It explores the creation and maintenance of domestic, professional, therapeutic and rehabilitative spheres for the practice of needlecrafts and examines how gender characteristics and identities were constructed and deconstructed. I am interested in the galvanisation of women to engage themselves in needlecrafts, especially knitting and crochet and the relationship between needlecraft and masculinities during and after the war, including the use of embroidery to rehabilitate wounded veterans.
Ken Clarry
k.clarry1@uni.brighton.ac.uk
The spectre of violence in contemporary political art practice
My research is about exposing and defining the 'Spectre of violence' in contemporary political art practices. I use this research enquiry as a means of examining a concern for the inner or hidden workings of society at war with itself. I believe academic study provides platforms for engagement with likeminded practitioners and allows for ‘firmer’ insight into what others within the University are critically thinking and exploring. It is vital for artists, just like theorists, to test out their ideas through discourse and I hope that I will be able to contribute or help to expand ways of visual thinking within the Centre.
Helen Dixon
helenclaredixon@gmail.com
The Fictional Archive: decolonial feminist perspectives on UK colonisation from the Nicaraguan Caribbean
I am a practice-based interdisciplinary PhD student using creative and critical writing to examine the Fictional Archive
e. My study focuses on the history (end of 18th to 19th century) of UK colonialism on the Caribbean coast of today’s Nicaragua. I’m examining racialised power relations, women’s stories and queer perspectives enmeshed in this history and their relevance for the present. My research focuses on stories that are made invisible in the archives but are present or partially submerged in popular memory. I’m working with experimental fiction, to see how the imaginative memory might destabilise narratives reproduced by the hegemonic archive, and how the recognition of othered histories and epistemologies contributes to new forms of interrelation and agency in social change movement.
Andrea García González
A.GarciaGonzalez@brighton.ac.uk
Reconciliation in the Basque Country: Examining the impact of gender dynamics in a post-conflict society.
I am a TECHNE funded doctoral student awarded in 2015. My research seeks to analyse how gender dynamics in reconciliation discourse and practices in the Basque Country contribute to the rethinking of ‘reconciliation’ as an approach to promoting ‘peace’. From an interdisciplinary approach (ethnographic methods framed within historical cultural studies), and building on the work completed for my master’s dissertation about women and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, this research aims to chart a genealogy of hidden, gendered meanings and impacts of ‘reconciliation’ in context. It will examine how women are participating in the reconciliation process in the Basque Country; how they shape ‘reconciliation’ as a concept and practice; and how their involvement reflects gender roles and divisions in Basque society.
Garikoitz Gómez Alfaro
g.gomezalfaro@brighton.ac.uk
Mapping post-conflict memory. Affective landscapes, imaginative geography and the public uses of the past in Derry/Londonderry (Northern Ireland) and Portbou (Spain)
I am the holder of a fully funded University of Brighton doctoral studentship, ‘Landscapes of affect: The politics of space, place and experience’, awarded in 2012. My research interests revolve around the politics of public memory and grassroots history, especially in contexts of political violence. In my ongoing doctoral project, I interrogate the relationship between memory, space and justice in Spain and Northern Ireland. I approach these questions by looking not only at the various embodied and inscribed technologies of memory mobilised by different actors, but also at the disjointed experience of time experienced in landscapes haunted by violent pasts. Besides, I am particularly interested in activist research / participatory methodologies and recent debates around so-called "more-than-representational" geographies.
Struan Gray
S.C.Gray@brighton.ac.uk
A haunted transition: Places of past violence in post-dictatorship Chilean film
I am the recipient of a University of Brighton fully funded doctoral studentship on ‘Histories, memories and the sites and spaces of conflict: Tropes of haunting in negotiating violent pasts’, awarded in 2014. My research considers film’s role in contesting and constructing cultural memory of violent or repressive pasts. Specifically I am interested in post-dictatorship Chile, examining the myriad strategies through which filmmakers expose, or conceal, the haunting legacies of military rule. I am using an interdisciplinary conceptual framework, drawing on theory from film studies, cultural geography, history and memory studies. I hope to provide insights into the relationship between film and material sites of past violence, exploring how film discourse constructs an affective map of past violence and continued injustice.
Lisa Hardie
l.hardie2@brighton.ac.uk
Memorial landscapes: Negotiating post-conflict spaces. The case of New Zealand Visitors to Gallipoli
I was granted the University of Brighton fully funded doctoral studentship on 'Memorial landscapes: Negotiating post-conflict spaces' in 2013. I am researching the emotional and affectual geographies of New Zealand tourists when they visit the commemorative WWI sites in Gallipoli, Turkey. Through this case study I will apply Foucault's concept of 'heterotopia' to investigate feelings of belonging and (dis)connection, and how tourists' embodied experiences in the memorial landscape are related to cultural memory and national identity.
Ekua Mcmorris
i.mcmorris@brighton.ac.uk
Performative acts of race: through images, memory and movement in an urban context
I am the recipient of a fully funded doctoral studentship at the University of Brighton. My practice based research project investigates the connection between identity and photography. My research examines how race is captured and performed in front of the lens. Using an autoethnographic methodology, I interrogate the history of photography and its influence in the construction of the Black subject. I am particularly interested in how three generations of women in my family have used photography in which to reaffirm or recreate a new Black identity. Focusing on family narratives, memories, and photographs, my research examines some of the larger themes surrounding Black British cultural identity; its relationship with Britain’s colonial past to the present day.
Lucy Newby
l.newby@brighton.ac.uk
Reflecting upon youth experience during the Troubles: the trans-generational transmission of memory in post-conflict Belfast
I was granted a full-time TECHNE/AHRC-funded doctoral studentship in 2015. My current research is an oral history project on the dynamics of trans-generational memory in post-conflict Belfast. Focusing on youthful experiences of the Troubles, I employ an inter-disciplinary framework to explore their psychic, emotional, cultural and socio-political legacies for individuals and communities in the present. I aim to contribute to scholarly understandings of the transitional peace process in Northern Ireland, and to the work of inter-disciplinary researchers interested in building usable understandings of the process of ‘coming to terms with the past’ in contemporary post-conflict societies more broadly.
Kristin O'Donnell
K.O'Donnell3@uni.brighton.ac.uk
Performing Emotional Histories: Centenary Commemorations of the First World War
I am a recipient of a TECHNE AHRC National Productivity Investment Fund studentship awarded in 2017 in partnership with Dover Arts Development. I am interested in whether emotional history and the affective turn have opened up new possibilities through which our understanding of history can be enhanced through performative practice, and the wider social and political implications this may have. Through a focus on recent performance-based commemorations of the First World War during the centenary years my research aims to explore why Britain is remembering World War I in this way, and what the contribution of such work is to the dominant cultural memory of the War. As the events of 1914-1918 have slipped out of living memory performance has increasingly emerged as form of commemorating the Great War. By analysing both national and grassroots commemorations my research aims to explore the politics of war commemoration and the personal connections people make to the past through performance. Combining theoretical frameworks from history, cultural memory, performance studies and aesthetics, this research will analyse performative-based commemoration as a product of the British cultural memory of the First World War.
Jason Porter
J.Porter2@brighton.ac.uk
Hidden from History – The Politics of Forgetting and Remembering Homosexual Victims of Nazism
My research concerns the history and cultural memory of what is often considered a marginalised group. It looks at first-hand accounts from survivors, as well as examining the responses to these texts, and the subsequent narrative that has developed in the decades following the end of the war. I aim to develop a framework with which to analyse these testimonies, both in order to establish why their stories were silenced for so long, and how they are understood and politicised in relation to more contemporary gay struggles.
Fearghus Roulston
fearghus.roulston@gmail.com
Justa notha teenage rebel: Belfast punk and the Troubles, 1974–1979
I am the holder of a full-time TECHNE/AHRC-funded doctoral studentship awarded in 2014. My current research project is an oral history of the Belfast punk scene of the late 1970s, considering its relationship to the political, cultural and social context from which it emerged as well as how an affiliation with the scene affected and continues to affect the subjectivity and identity of my interviewees. It will consider how individual stories are shaped by broader discourses of memory as well as personal experience, and how concepts such as place and resistance are threaded into life narratives.
Melina Sadikovic
m.sadikovic@brighton.ac.uk
Justice, memory and experience in reconciliation after conflict: the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina
I am the recipient of a University of Brighton fully funded doctoral studentship on ‘Justice, memory and experience in reconciliation after conflict’, awarded in 2013. My research investigates cultural memory in the post conflict societies of the former Yugoslavia with a particular focus on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The concept of the past, culture and ways in which war memory are negotiated and contested will be critically examined through the analysis of current war memory discourse and memory practices.
Kasia Tomasiewicz
kat31@brighton.ac.uk
The IWM and Public Memory of the Second World War
I was granted a fully AHRC-funded PhD studentship with the University of Brighton and the Imperial War Museum in May 2016 as part of the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme. My research on ‘The IWM and Public Memory of the Second World War’ is concerned with the changing landscapes of remembrance, commemoration and memory of the Second World War in Britain. In addition to establishing cultural and political shifts in Britain from 1917 to the present, I will closely examine the politics of Second World War display and audience engagement at the IWM London in the past, and for the opening of their upcoming Second World War galleries in 2020.
Ana Živković
A.Zivkovic@brighton.ac.uk
Constructions of Montenegro in the Works of British Writers from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
My background is in comparative literature and I trace patterns and trends in western perceptions of south-eastern Europe, looking specifically at Montenegro, from the nineteenth century up to the present, through both global postcolonial and regional balkanist discourse criticism. I look at cultural, historical, political, geopolitical and economic contexts that shape western responses to south-eastern Europe. My research interests also focus on cultural memory and how trans-generational histories and narratives create ethnic, national and cultural identities of individuals.
Gillian Ditch
G.Ditch1@uni.brighton.ac.uk
I am a retired teacher & have embarked on the course with a view to undertaking voluntary work in the heritage sector in the future. As a primary teacher I often took pupils on trips to museums and places of historical interest in Sussex. In secondary schools I took students to Brighton Museum to investigate local culture & census data related to occupations in the early 19th century. The way that information is presented can be key in inspiring young people to learn more about their cultural heritage. I believe it is important for pupils to have opportunities to visit places of cultural interest whether they be small, large, local or national. When I visit an exhibition I am interested in how it has been curated to suit the needs and interests of different target groups. Brighton Museum provides a great opportunity to discover how the city has always been a place that’s dared to be different and has a particular cultural identity.
Catherine Miller
C.Miller3@uni.brighton.ac.uk
I am taking the M.A. in Cultural History, the Memory and Identity pathway at the University of Brighton. I have two areas of study that I am particularly interested. Firstly, transnational Identity, arising from my mother's background as an Anglo-Indian growing up in the British Military in India and her experiences of coming to England in the 1950s. And secondly, the ethics surrounding personal testimony, academia, authorship & ownership - which may be my dissertation topic. I also did my undergrad in Libraries & Information Studies and have great interest in archiving and knowledge structures, i.e. the design / creation of an archive built around cognitive patterns / mapping.
