h.atkinson2@brighton.ac.uk
I am a historian of design and culture. I teach History of Art & Design in the School of Humanities and Critical & Cultural Studies in the School of Arts. My interests are in the history of art, design and visual culture for propaganda, protest and resistance; the history of graphic and visual communication in the expanded field; the history and material culture of exhibitions and displays; and in design as the focus for transnational or diplomatic exchange. From February 2019 to January 2023 I am on research leave as an AHRC Leadership Fellow, working on the project '"The Materialisation of Persuasion": Modernist Exhibitions in Britain for Propaganda and Resistance, 1933 to 1953'. This will result in a monograph, a co-edited essay collection (under contract with Bloomsbury Academic) and a documentary film (in collaboration with Four Corners London).
School of Architecture and Design
K.Beinart@brighton.ac.uk
I am an artist, researcher and lecturer based in the School of Architecture and Design, where I teach across design studio, architectural humanities and research practices. My art practice often engages with the public realm and includes installation, public art, performance, film and socially engaged projects. My work explores links between material culture, memory, identity and place. I have recently completed a practice-based PhD titled: ‘Détour and Retour: Practices and poetics of salt as narratives of relation and re-generation in Brixton’, which draws on the work of Édouard Glissant to develop a practice and poetics of salt, exploring how salt features in relationships of migration and change in urban sites, in particular the context of Brixton, London. The thesis, and my wider practice and research, connect to themes of roots-based heritage tourism, memory and postmemory, ritual and re-enactment, heritage and regeneration.
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
S.M.Breakell@brighton.ac.uk
I am an archivist and researcher, working in archive studies and in art and design history. My research engages with ideas about the nature and meaning of archives, particularly visual arts archives; the practices of archivists, artists and others working with these collections; and their use in the history and practice of art and design. I am also interested in wider museological and curatorial frameworks for archives. Current research includes co-editing a volume on materiality and visual arts archives, and a project on the history of the University of Brighton’s Fine Art Critical Practice (FACP) degree programme, with the FACP Course Leader, artist Naomi Salaman, including a special issue of the Journal of Visual Art Practice (May 2019).
School of Humanities
T.Bunyard@brighton.ac.uk
My work tends to draw on philosophy and critical theory as a means of addressing culture, politics and aesthetics. In the past, my research has focussed on the theoretical legacy of Guy Debord and the Situationist International, and on Debord’s central concept of ‘spectacle’. I recently completed a monograph on this topic, in which I reconstructed the broadly Hegelian and existential philosophical framework that underpins Debord’s ideas (Debord, Time and Spectacle: Hegelian Marxism and Situationist Theory, Haymarket, 2018). This entailed placing particular emphasis on Debord’s interest in time and temporality, and I used this to develop an interpretation that foregrounded the connections between the concept of spectacle and Debord’s understanding of history. Since the publication of the book, I have been trying to develop and re-work some of the ideas that I identified in Debord’s writings, with a view towards using them as a means of addressing aspects of contemporary culture. To that end, I am currently working on some of the new readings of Hegel, Marx and Lukacs that have appeared in recent years. I hope to synthesise and employ some of this material as means of re-articulating the elements of Debord’s theory that seem pertinent today.
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 Humanities
nhf@brighton.ac.uk
My interdisciplinary research fields are in modern Anglo-American (and Russian) literature. I am particularly interested in cultural, ethnographic, historical, and psychogeographic influences in three main areas: the inter-connectedness of East-West cultures and civilizations; the international dimensions of modernism; and the role of literature in heightening consciousness of the interdependence of the world around us. My work - in English and Russian – has appeared in various peer-reviewed international journals and books. I have delivered keynote lectures and research papers - and chaired sessions - at a range of international (and world) conferences. Currently I am contracted to complete a monographon the late modernist English writer, Malcolm Lowry. It focusses on the impact of civilizations – east and west, ancient and modern – on his creative imagination, examining the influence of surrealism, the reintegration of modernism with primitivism, and the origins of the Mexican Day of the Dead.
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 Education
mh101@brighton.ac.uk
Mike works on the professional doctorate, postgraduate and undergraduate programmes at the School of Education. He has a particular interest in biographical and narrative research methodologies and methods. His research and writing draws upon analytic autoethnography and life history methods to examine the education of teachers, the role of narrative in the construction of identity and the development of pedagogy. These themes are closely related to his professional practice and are informed by experience in community writing & publishing, primary school teaching, and teacher education.
School of Humanities
C.Hogsbjerg@brighton.ac.uk
My research expertise broadly relates to reparative histories of race and resistance, with particular reference toCaribbean history, the black presence in imperial Britain and the black experience of the British Empire. One specialist focus of my research has concerned the life and work of the black radical Trinidadian intellectual and activist C.L.R. James (1901-1989) who made a profound contribution as a historian to revolutionising scholarly understanding on Atlantic slavery and abolition, and as an activist to the making and shaping of modern multi-cultural, ‘post-colonial’ Britain.
l.hughes3@bsms.ac.uk
I am an applied health researcher based at the Centre for Dementia Studies at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. I have an academic background in psychology and an occupational background in the social care sector. My research interests are mainly concerned with quality of life in dementia, and quality of life and quality of care in care homes. I recently completed my PhD on the development and evaluation of routine quality of life measurement in care homes. My research interests are relatively broad, including many aspects of adult health and social care. I have been involved in a range of different research projects including: using a music intervention in community hospitals; understanding adolescent perceptions of dementia and dementia education in high schools; and evaluating the effect of a dementia awareness initiative in adolescents. I enjoy interdisciplinary working and am excited to use my applied health research skills and interests to work with people from other disciples. I am particularly interested in the history and politics of health and social care institutions and how this understanding can inform the present, and future directions and successes.
a.iveson@brighton.ac.uk
School of Humanities
My research is interdisciplinary and broadly covers the areas of nationalism, language ideologies, gender and identity. One particular focus of my research is the exploration of women’s narratives in Catalonia during the Franco dictatorship and the transition to democracy, integrating oral history with a discourse analytical approach. I am also interested in language use on social media and how the past informs these online narratives. I am working on a new project on the discourses relating to the recent exhumation of Franco’s body.
School of Humanities
C.Jordan-Baker@brighton.ac.uk
I am a writer and research based in the School of Humanities, where I teach broadly across the Creative Writing, English Literature and English Language degrees. I have published peer-reviewed research on the nature of Creative Writing in the academy, as well as on the representation of landscape and the uses of archives in creative writing practice. I am a dramatist and fiction writer, and my work had been published and performed widely. My first novel The Nacullians was published by Epoque Press in 2020
School of Humanities
School of Health Sciences
T.Mcintosh@brighton.ac.uk
I am a qualified midwife and historian with a particular interest in histories of midwifery, maternity and policy. I have published on aspects of midwifery identity and professionalism from the late nineteenth century, and have made use of oral history to explore the working lives of both district and hospital midwives in the post-war period. My current work is on the development of policy and practice in maternity between 1960-2000, particularly narratives of risk and normality; the development and impact of technology; and development of media in reflecting and ‘selling’ narratives of pregnancy and birth.
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).
c.ozpinar@brighton.ac.uk
I am a historian of contemporary art and visual culture with a special interest in difference and a geographical focus on Turkey and the Middle East. I especially pay attention to faultlines and border situations where ethnic, racial, gendered and cultural difference has been discussed, represented and reproduced in art histories, in modern and contemporary art practices and in physical spaces. My research crosses over between art history, postcolonial studies, feminist scholarship, curatorial studies and material culture. At Brighton, I teach History of Art and Design at the School of Humanities and Critical Studies at the School of Arts, in addition to running the college option Sexual Politics: Art and Feminism.
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.
P.PrietoBlanco@brighton.ac.uk
I lead the degree Media and Environmental Communication BA (Hons) and am editor at HYSTERIA radical feminist collective, YECREA representative for the ECREA TWG Visual Cultures, as well as an advocate of interdisciplinary, participatory and practice-based research. My areas of expertise are visual research methods, photography and migration. My research interests are photography, methods and methodologies, mediation of the everyday and migration. Currently, I am an international adviser for three research projects: "What's in the App? Digitally-mediated communication within contemporary multilingual families across time and space" (University of Jyväskylä, Finland); "Postfotografie. Apparate, Praktiken, Bilder in Kunst und Alltagskultur" (Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland) and "Visibilizando el dolor: narrativas visuales de la enfermedad y storytelling transmedia" (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, Spain).
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 Applied Social Science
H.Thurston@brighton.ac.uk
I am a cultural criminologist who is interested in narratives and counter narratives of (in)justice. More specifically my research explores the ways in which tourist sites tell place-positioned stories about crime and punishment, and how these stories resonate with [or have the potential to destabilise] wider cultural scripts of self-identity. For example, my PhD research considered penal tourist sites in Texas, one of the most punitive places in the westernised world. Here I was interested in how prison museums and prison tours told stories about who, how and why the Lone Star State punishes in the way it does. In addition though, I am also interested in what happens to decommissioned jail cells and prisons more broadly. These buildings are increasingly being used for high-end cocktail bars, restaurants, hotels and other commercial ventures, most of which serve to distance the tourist from the pains of incarceration. More recently, I have also become interested in Policing Museums. Often set up and managed by ex-police officers, these are important sites of institutional memory which ‘teach’ the public about policing past and present. In summary then, I approach all of these storied spaces – many of which can be understood under the banner of ‘dark tourism’ – as important cultural sites in which narratives of justice and injustice play out on a public stage.
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 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.
Simon Aeppli
info@simonaeppli.co.uk
My practice-based PhD uses a range of disciplines, documentary, memory studies, folklore and haunting, which will lead to the production of a long form essay film for film festival distribution. The research project will explore the disinformation techniques used by the Information Policy Unit (IPU) in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s. The research focuses on the coordination of fake satanic rituals throughout Northern Ireland to create terror and confusion across the province. The research addresses the design of the ‘witchcraft operations’ and how the head of the unit, Colin Wallace was essentially working in a similar way to screenwriters by creating a real-time horror film in the landscape. The project is funded by the TECHNE/AHRC consortium.
Martha Beard
M.Beard@brighton.ac.uk
Cross-Community Oral History, Post-Conflict Geography and Conflict Resolution at West Belfast Interfaces
I am the recipient of a full-time, practice-based, TECHNE/AHRC-funded doctoral studentship awarded in January 2019 in collaboration with Falls Community Council in West Belfast. My research combines approaches from memory studies, cultural history, life history and the practice of peacebuilding, to evaluate the role of oral history as a peacebuilding tool in Northern Ireland and broader global contexts. In particular, it involves the critical exploration of the Dúchas Oral History Archive, situated in Falls Community Council, West Belfast, to acknowledge and deal with a conflicted history of The Troubles.
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.
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.
Claire Harrison
C.Harrison@brighton.ac.uk
FIREDAMP: a Novel, and Contextualising Research: Writing, Scottish Clan Culture, Heritage, People Movement, the implications on ‘Home’ and the Family Dynamic
I am an editor, writer and researcher based in the School of Humanities. My research deals with identity and the sense of ‘belonging’ with a focus on the impact that Scottish clan heritage has on an individual’s sense of belonging and identity, specifically when related to migration. I am interested to explore the theme of being altered and how migration changes our sense of identity. In addition to my research I am also founder and co-editor of The Phare Literary Magazine, a commercial copywriter and marketing professional.
Jack Maginn
J.Maginn@brighton.ac.uk
Iterations of Queerness: Adaptations of Virginia Woolf's Life and Work in Post-1990 Cinema
I am a researcher in The School of Media with a background in political thought who's interests lie at the intersection of queer theory, film studies and 20th century literature. My research looks to compare narrativizations of queerness in the writings of Virginia Woolf with those in post-1990 filmic adaptations of her life and work. I look to draw upon the work of queer theorists of temporality (such as Butler, Freeman, Dinshaw and Stockton), a new materialist understanding of Woolf and Critical Discourse Analysis in order to perform my analysis. The aims of my research are to denaturalize representations of sexuality, make comment on the potential of different forms of media for queer storytelling and intervene within the literature on Woolf, queerness and film.
Jon Mason
J.Mason2@brighton.ac.uk
Re-storying the city: applying urban perspectives to eco-storytelling
I am a professional storyteller, focussing in particular on the folklore, mythology and social history of the British Isles (jonthestoryteller.com). Academically I am interested in the intersection of stories, landscape and identity; the role of narrative in shaping culture and sense of self; and in using storytelling to understand past and present. I am looking at the potential to improve community engagement and environmental awareness through increased awareness of local history, folklore, and one's own personal narratives. I am particularly keen to explore how such models can engage with urban/suburban life and space. Other interests include the place of myth in subcultural/group identity (especially regarding popular music); and the historical insights offered by medieval narratives such as the Mabinogion and Beowulf.
Aine McKenny
a.mckenny@brighton.ac.uk
The Women of the Troubles: Presence and Absence in Public Memory
I am the recipient of a full-time TECHNE/AHRC-funded doctoral studentship awarded in 2018. My research project investigates the roles and experiences of women during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and analyses the presence/absence of women within public memory since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. To do this, my research possesses a focus onto how female participation in, and perspectives of, the Troubles have been historically interpreted and presented within the museum and heritage sector. My work utilise an interdisciplinary approach to incorporate subject areas of conflict, oral history, museology and memory studies.
Nicola Miles
n.miles2@brighton.ac.uk
A revolution in children’s clothes? Crafting change: Clothkits and the revisioning of an English pastoral tradition, 1969-1988
My project is focused on the changes and developments that took place in British children’s clothes from the late-1960s to the late-1980s and takes the British company, Clothkits as a case study. A large part of the research for this study involves oral testimony from adults who wore Clothkits as children and adults who made Clothkits for their children. This provides for, at least, the retrospective expression of the child’s voice that has been lacking in dress history. I am interested in children’s clothes and attitudes towards children and childhood, women’s roles in this context, home-making and craft, narrative histories and storytelling, the pastoral aesthetic and folk tales and folk practices. My background is in creative practice, having taken an MA in Textiles at Brighton.
Sophie Monk
s.monk2@brighton.ac.uk
Rioting and Reproduction: Theorizing and Historicizing British Queer Liberation in the 1960s and ‘70s.
My research focuses on the radical politics of emergent queer liberation fronts in the 1960s and '70s in Britain. Through an interdisciplinary use of theoretical and historical methods, the project brings contemporary turns in Marxist critical theory to bear on the material conditions of queer life, investigating the means by which LGBT folk in Britain struggled for liberation and sustained their communities on the precipice and in the immediate aftermath of global economic crisis. The project is funded by the TECHNE/AHRC consortium.
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.
Andrea Potts
A.Potts@brighton.ac.uk
How do exhibitions of colonialism in museums mediate historical trauma?
I am interested in how museum exhibitions represent histories of European colonialism and how these histories are engaged with by audiences. Through researching these processes in museums in Britain, the Netherlands, and Denmark, I assess how contemporary museum exhibitions in Europe mediate colonialism as historical trauma. I consider whether exhibitions perpetuate trauma or act as a form of post-trauma therapy and for whom, and how these positions relate to the decolonising of the museum. Do exhibitions support or hinder decolonisation and why? My research brings together understandings of exhibitionary practices, decolonial practice, and cultural memory. It is funded by the TECHNE/AHRC consortium.
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.
Vanessa Tautter
v.tautter@brighton.ac.uk
Exclusive and Excluding Perspectives on the Past: Narratives of Victimisation among the Contemporary Right in Austria and Northern Ireland
My research analyses how right-wing groups in Austria and Northern Ireland portray themselves as victims in narratives about the past to gain recognition and political agency in contemporary victim-oriented societies. More specifically, it explores the ways in which socially and culturally conservative supporters of these groups position themselves in or in relation to these narratives and seeks to understand the meaning as well as functions of such claims to victimhood for them. This project is fully funded by TECHNE/AHRC and the University of Brighton.
Claudia Treacher
Radical Art During WWII: Conscientious Objection in the Work of Don Treacher
I am a TECHNE AHRC funded doctoral student awarded in 2018, and my research focuses on the art and memory of protest. My PhD thesis is an exploration of the art of British Conscientious Objectors during the Second World War through the lens of a previously undocumented body of artwork by CO Don Treacher who was also my great-uncle. Drawing on oral histories and archival research, the research will use Treacher’s artwork as a lens through which to locate pacifist networks within Britain’s varied visual language and political beliefs.
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.
Hannah Voegele
H.Voegele@brighton.ac.uk
Resisting the Violence of Property
My research investigates property’s violence, i.e. how modern property forcefully structures our (gendered, sexualised and racialised) relationships with others, ourselves and our bodies – and try to excavate (imagined and already existent) alternatives. I seek to combine theoretical and historical methodologies for a historical ontology of propertised relations. The specificities of Germany’s colonial practices help grasp these social formations. Resistant and counterhegemonic movements of past and present build an archive for alternate ways of relating and organising collective life. The project is funded by the TECHNE/AHRC consortium and the University of Brighton.
Catherine Lynott Wilson
Najma Yusufi
N.Yusufi@brighton.ac.uk
I am a novelist, researcher and lecturer based in the School of Humanities, where I research the idea of double consciousness in British Asian writing. My creative practice has consisted of two documentaries of the transgender community in North Pakistan and also on the plight of lawyers in North India. I have am also author of Begums of Peshawar (Hachette, 2018) and am currently working on my second novel. For my PhD thesis I am Themes of double consciousness In British Asian writing in Brick Lane, Buddha of Suburbia and Year of the Runaways and how double-consciousness informs my writing of Leave to Remain against the political climate of a pre and post-Brexit.
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.
Renas Babakir
R.Babakir1@uni.brighton.ac.uk
I am awarded with Chevening Scholarship to pursue MA in Cultural History Memory and Identity at the University of Brighton. I have a particular interest in collective memory and identity in relation to built spaces. The focus of my research is to explore the significance of a built environment, as material culture for a group’s cultural memory and identity in order to investigate the question of why buildings become targets of destruction. Considering this, the destruction of memory in a built space is a phenomenon in which the destruction of meaning as well as physical destruction are targeted. Throughout Twentieth and Twenty-First Century, deliberate attacks on material culture has been a weapon of war which usually followed by the elimination and disintegration of its groups. I have brought together material from the fields of cultural memory, architecture, history and anthropology that might shed a light on the topic of my dissertation. I hope to work on researches and projects with the centre; coming from a minority group in Iraq and studying Cultural History, Memory and Identity, has motivated me to look forward to potential researches and projects on different crucial topics in Iraq.
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.
Calvin Moore
C.Moore17@uni.brighton.ac.uk
I am a part time Creative Writing Master’s student with a career background in the funeral services sector. My profession has led me to taking an interest in the cultural and societal implications that arise out of bereavement, living with grief, and the way these factors may affect our own reflections on mortality. I write essays and fiction that grapple with these challenging concepts in order to investigate how we might live better with the knowledge that life is impermanent, and to observe how humans have responded to these questions historically. In this way I attempt not only to use the past to inform the future, but also construct new narratives that endeavour to recast death as the basis out of which new life grows, rather than it merely being seen as the end of life. I also contribute to the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing, using the research approaches of autoethnography and ficto-criticism to explore the experiences of students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
