Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories

The Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories (CMNH) exists to develop, focus and stimulate research at the University of Brighton concerned with the cultural significance of the past for our lived experience, social relationships, politics and identities in the present. Emphasising the plural 'histories', the Centre’s work explores the relations between powerful or official narratives about the past and those which give expression to subordinate, marginalised and neglected historical experience.

Our research investigates the practices that produce and circulate memories, knowledges and understandings of ‘the past’, including: Archives and histories, Community history, Cultural memory, Cultural, social and political history, Oral history and life history, Popular history making, Public history and heritage, Testimony, life writing and narrative.

It reflects critically on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of our own research practices, and facilitates engagement between academic scholarship and the work of creative practitioners, community and political activists, and other professional stakeholders involved in making histories, in representing the past, and in producing forms of remembrance and commemoration.