Usually a one-day event involving invited speakers – visiting researchers as well as members of the Centre and the University of Brighton – and taking place during either the late autumn or early spring terms, the annual symposium enables sustained debate on a theme chosen to develop (and create a public profile for) work in one of the Centre’s fields of interest or project areas.
2008-09: Launch symposium: New Directions in the Study of Memory, Narrative and Histories
2009-10 : Archives and the Politics of History and Memory
2010-11: The Arab Spring: Symposium to mark the first anniversary
2011-12: History, Memory and Green Imaginaries
2012-13: New Approaches to the History and Memory of War and Conflict
2014-15: Heritage in the 21st Century
2015-16: Abusing Power. The Visual Politics of Satire
2016-17: Reparative Histories 2: The Making, Re-Making and Un-Making of 'Race'
2017-18: Critical Histories
2018-19: Post Industrial Imaginaries: beyond progress, memory and loss
2019-20: Histories, narratives and cultures of death, dying and anticipatory grief (postponed due to Covid 19)
2020-21:
Find details here
Usually a series of six seminars programmed in advance and taking place monthly on Wednesday early evenings during the autumn and spring terms. The series may link different approaches to a particular research theme, or offer a diversity of subjects that speak to a wider range of the Centre’s interests and bring together different constituencies of scholarly and public engagement.
Seminar series 2008–09
Seminar series 2009–10
Seminar series 2010–11
Seminar series 2011–12
Seminar series 2012–13
Seminar series 2013–14: theme: History, memory and culture after war and conflict
Seminar series 2014–15: theme: Subjectivities, politics, activism
Seminar series 2015–16: theme: Heritage in the 21stcentury
Seminar series 2016– 17: theme: Emotional Histories
Seminar series 2017–18: theme: Histories, Memories and Futures
Seminar series 2018–19: theme: Unsettling Memories
Seminar series 2019–20: theme: Unheard Voices, Marginalised Memories
Seminar series 2020–21: theme: Unheard Voices, Marginalised Memories (continued and now online)
Find details here
Usually taking place in the summer term and organised in collaboration with the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research at the University of Sussex, its principal aim is to showcase research by, and enable debate between, postgraduate and early career researchers at the two Universities with shared interests in a particular theme related to oral history, life history and memory research. Delegates from other universities in Britain and further afield are also welcome.
2008-09: Memories Narratives and Histories: first annual Brighton/Sussexpostgraduate conference
2009–10: Public Lives, Private Lives; New Research Across the Disciplines
2010-11: The Emotions in History, Memory and Storytelling
2011-12: Working with Narrative, Memory and Life History: A Postgraduate Afternoon for Sharing Projects, Skills and Job Experiences
2013-14: Researching Uniqueness: How life history research entails singular questions and special outcomes.
2014-15: Internationalism of Life History Research
2015-16: Subversive Histories for Public Cultures. The politics of life history research
2016-17: Life History and Life Writing Research: Critical and Creative Approaches
2017-18: Time, Memory, and Conflict: Critical Approaches
2018-19: Memory, nostalgia and the politics of space and place
2019-20: Cancelled due to Covid 19
2021-21: Transgenerational Memory (online)
Find details here
The Centre organises on an occasional basis research conferences and symposia on topics of national and international significance, chosen to develop one of its major project areas.
National Conference: War, Silence and Memory in Modern Britain, 9th Feb 2011 at The Royal Marines Museum, Portsmouth
International Conference: World War II - Popular Culture and Cultural Memory, 13th –15th Jul 2011 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton
National Conference: The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain, 11th–13th Jul 2012 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton
Symposium: Hearing Her: New Feminist Oral Histories, 11th Apr 2013, University of Sussex
National conference: War: An Emotional History, 9th Jul 2014, The British Academy, London
International Conference: Reparative Histories: Radical Narratives of 'Race' and Resistance, 11th-12th Sept 2014 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton
Symposium: The Brighton 'Grand Hotel' Bombing: History, Memory and Political Theatre, 15th- 16th Oct 2014 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton
Symposium: The Armenian Tragedy: A Commemorative Symposium 29th October 2015 Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
International Conference: Reparative Histories 2: The Making, Re-Making and Un-Making of 'Race', 6th - 7th April, 2017 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
Conference: Afterlives of Violence: Contested Geographies of Past, Present and Future. University of Brighton, 29th June 2017.
Symposium: Blackness and the Complex Temporalities of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. 1st June 2018. M2 Boardroom, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
Conference: The Radical Sixties: Aesthetics, Politics and Histories of Solidarity. 28th to 29th June 2019. Grand Parade, University of Brighton and The Old Courtroom.
Conference: Engels in Eastbourne 23rd to 24th June 2020. Eastbourne Campus (postponed due to Covid 19)
Conference: The Neo-Victorian and the Late-Victorian: Texts, Media, Politics. 3rd - 4th September 2020. Grand Parade Brighton (postponed due to Covid 19)
Find details here
The Centre invites Visiting Professors to give open lectures and run workshops.
Professor Tina Campt (Abigail R. Cohen Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris and Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Tuesday 4th June to Friday 8th June 2019.
Professor Sean Field (University of Cape Town) Monday 17th June to Friday 21st June 2019.
Professor Marisa Fuentes (Rutgers School of Arts and Science) Public Lecture Monday 16th March 2020. Refuse Bodies, Disposable Lives: A History of the Human and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (cancelled due to Covid 19)
Professor Marisa Fuentes (Rutgers School of Arts and Science) Workshop (cancelled due to Covid 19)
Find details here
These may be organised on an ad hoc basis to offer a platform to Visiting Researchers, or to accompany and support a collaborative project, an exhibition, or similar occasion.
Black History Month Debate: 'Are black people excluded from the historic buildings of the places in which they live?' 16th Oct 2010, Education Room at Brighton Museum
Seminar: Our Dancing Feet, 2nd Nov 2013, Grand Parade, University of Brighton
Special seminar: Shirley Gunn (Director, Human Rights and Media Centre, Cape Town, South Africa), Screening and discussion of HRMC’s documentary film We Never Give Up II (dir. by Cahal McLaughlin, 2012), about the Khulumani survivors of apartheid support group and its campaign for reparations in post-apartheid South Africa. 22nd April 2013, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
Special seminar: Dr Keir Reeves (National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University, Australia), ‘Visiting the Past. Histories of Commemoration and Competing Narratives of Remembering War’, 27th June 2013, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
Seminar: Healing War Through Art, 7th May 2014, Grand Parade, University of Brighton
Special seminar: Professor Albert Grundlingh (Stellenbosch University) Mutating Memories and the Making of a Wartime Myth in South Africa: Remembering the SS Mendi Disaster 1917- 2007 in collaboration with Gateways to the First World War. 3rd February 2016, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
Seminar: Tina van der Vlies (Erasmus University) Metaphor and the resonance of events in the historical narration, 15th June 2016, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
Screening: The Battle of the Somme (1916) with Gateways to the First World War, The Fedora Group and The Duke of Yorks Picturehouse. 8th November 2016.
Research Workshop: 'Death and Myth: Towards a Biopolitics of Memory' with Visiting Research Fellow Charlottte Heath-Kelly. Wednesday, 18th January 2017, 1–3pm. Grand Parade.
Seminar: The Bombings of Barcelona and London: memories of a shared history with European Observatory on Memories (EDROM) 23rd May 2017, Imperial War Museum London.
Seminar: Place, body and story in the divided city: Ordinary agency in the everyday. Johanna Mannergren Selimovic (Swedish Institute of International Affairs and Visiting Scholar at Vesalius College, Brussels). 3rd May 2017.
Seminar: Memory, identity and literacy. Violence and education in Mexico. Professor César Correa Arias (University of Guadalajara). 21st June, 2017.
Seminar: The Militant Antifascism in Rome during the Seventies: constructing oral sources on the narrative of political violence. Jessica Matteo (Sapienza University, Rome) 30th May, 2018
Research Workshop: Rethinking ‘the Past’: The Cultural Politics of History, Memory and Temporality. A day of presentations and discussion featuring researchers from The Uses of the Past Research Group at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, Boardroom M2, Grand Parade site, University of Brighton, Tuesday 26 June 2018.
Health, Heritage and Memory Hub: Cross-disciplinary Networking Event. A50 Checkland Building, Falmer Campus, University of Brighton, Friday 22nd March 2019.
Archiving Spontaneous Memorials: The Shoreham Community Archive. Wendy Walker (County Archivist, West Sussex Record Office), University of Brighton, 25th November 2019.
Seminar: The Asset Strippers and the Asset Hiders: On Machines, Memory and Mutability. Professor Caitlin DeSilvey (University of Exeter), 201 Dorset Place, 11th December 2019.
Seminar: Rubble and Redevelopment. 5 -7pm G4 Grand Parade, 20th May 2020 (postponed due to Covid 19)
Symposium: Correspondences: a conversation about art, memory and heritage. (online). 15th June 2021.
Find details here
The Centre hosts events that mark, celebrate, and open up discussion around the publication of a book, written either by a CMNH member or by a local author whose work coincides with the Centre’s interests and activities.
Alex Ntung, Not My Worst Day: A Personal Journey Through Violence in the Great Lakes Region of Africa ([Hastings: EARS Press, 2013), in conjunction with Development Resources International, Black History Month, and CUPP, 8th Oct 2013, at Pavilion Parade, University of Brighton.
Lucy Noakes & Juliette Pattinson (eds), British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013); and Rebecca Bramall, The Cultural Politics of Austerity: Past and Present in Austere Times (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 21st Feb 2014, Grand Parade, University of Brighton
Dave Hann, Physical Resistance: A Hundred Years of Anti-Fascism (Zero Books, 2013),25 January 2013, Pavilion Parade, University of Brighton
