Unforgetting Hillsborough: researching memorialisation

This poster was presented at the 'X-Scapes: 10th Linguistic Landscapes Workshop, 02-04 May, 2018, University of Bern, Switzerland', It presented ongoing research into the memorialisation of the Hillsborough Football Tragedy (15 April, 1989) in which 96 Liverpool Football fans were unlawfully killed. It explores the notion of 'unforgetting', that is replacing a false narrative with a true account, and investighates this through and as “a nexus of trajectories shaped by the ongoing interventions of inter alia individuals, institutions, activist groups, artists, passers-by etc. producing their accounts, artefacts, transgressive emplacements and acts of unforgettting across different places, media and timescales"

The Amnesiac Consciousness of the Contemporary Holocaust Novel: Lily Brett’s Too Many Men and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated

No abstract (available)

‘We do it to keep him alive’: bereaved individuals’ experiences of online suicide memorials and continuing bonds

This paper presents draws on interviews with individuals who have experience of creating, maintaining and utilising Facebook sites in memory of a loved one who has died by suicide. We argue that Facebook enables the deceased to be an on-going active presence in the lives of the bereaved. We highlight the potential of the Internet (and Facebook in particular) as a new and emerging avenue for the continuation of online identities and continuing bonds. Our study offers unique insight into survivors’ experiences of engaging with the virtual presence of their deceased loved one: how mourners come and go online, how this evolves over time and how the online identity of the deceased evolves even after death. We discuss how Facebook provides new ways for people to experience and negotiate death by suicide and to memorialise the deceased, highlighting the positive impact of this for survivors’ mental health. Finally, we describe the creation of tension amongst those who manage their grief in different ways

Once more, with feeling : an enquiry into The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa's exhibition Gallipoli: the scale of our war : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Museum Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

This thesis examines The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s exhibition Gallipoli: The scale of our war. Conceived in partnership with Weta Workshop and formulated during a period of institutional uncertainty, Gallipoli was ostensibly created to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. This research investigates what this exhibition and the methodologies and practices deployed in its development reveals about how Te Papa interprets its public service role, and concludes that Gallipoli signals an intensification of its hegemonic function. Marked by a discursive engagement with critical museology and theoretical perspectives pertaining to the ethics of memorialisation and practices of governmentality, in this thesis a transdisciplinary approach is adopted. Employing a qualitative and grounded theory methodology and inductive processes, anchoring the research are interviews with Te Papa staff and Gallipoli visitors, documentary evidence, exhibition ‘text’ analysis and autoethnographic reflections. This thesis suggests that Gallipoli is characterised by a distinctive ‘affective public pedagogy’. Further to this, it is argued that Gallipoli not only has significant implications for Te Papa’s pedagogical functions, but also for conceptions of subjectivity, citizenship and nationhood in New Zealand in the twenty-first century. It is contended that recent developments at Te Papa have further problematized its exogenous and endogenous relations of power, and that the ritualised practices of affect afforded by Gallipoli are ideologically prescribed. It is also determined that Te Papa’s legislative responsibility to be a ‘forum for the nation’ requires reconsidering

Sustainable deathstyles? The geography of green burials in Britain

In the context of a wider literature on ‘deathscapes’, we map the emergence of a new mode of burial and remembrance in Britain. Since a ‘green’ burial ground was established in Carlisle in 1993, sites for so-called ‘green, ‘natural’ or ‘woodland’ funerals have proliferated. There are now over 270 such sites in Britain. Drawing on a postal and email survey sent to all managers/owners and visits to 15 green burial grounds (enabling observations and semi-structured interviews with their managers), we chart their growth, establishment and regulation and describe the landscapes associated with them. This requires, and leads to, wider reflections on nature, capital, consumption, culture and the body

Continuing social presence of the dead: Exploring suicide bereavement through online memorialisation

© 2014 The Author(s). The last 10 years have seen a rise in Internet sites commemorating those lost to suicide. These sites describe the life of the deceased and the afterlife of relatives, parents, friends or siblings who have been termed the "forgotten bereaved". It is clear that such sites have implications for continuing bonds and for what many commentators refer to as the continuing social presence of the dead.This paper presents interim findings from ongoing research which focuses on two aspects of suicide memorial websites. First, we explore the extent to which such sites help us understand how the Internet is enabling new ways of grieving and is, in effect, making new cultural scripts. Second, although there is a large body of writing on the management of trauma there is little evidence-based research. The paper draws on face-to-face interviews with owners of suicide memorial sites (family members and friends) and explores how the establishment and maintenance of such a site is an important part of the therapeutic process and how, for grieving relatives, making or contributing to such sites provides ways of managing trauma in the aftermath of a death by suicide

Acts of Heritage, Acts of Value: Memorializing at the Chattri Indian Memorial, UK

The Chattri Indian Memorial is a public site that hosts and embodies heritage in complex ways. Standing on the edge of Brighton, UK in a once-remote part of the Sussex Downs, the Memorial was built in 1921 to honour Indian soldiers who fought on the Western Front during the First World War. As both a sacred place and a space of socio-cultural heritagization processes, the monument is an enduring testament of past values of war heroism, but also more ephemeral practices of ritual. The article documents the heritage-making at work within memorialization at the Chattri as a case study, examining how differing ‘valuations’ of a memorial site can be enacted through time, between material form and immaterial practices, and across cultures. The article theorizes participants’ current affective practices as conscious ‘past presencing’ (Macdonald, 2013), and analyses how their conscious acts of heritage-making affectively enacted values of morality, community and belonging

A multi-layered approach to surfacing and analysing organisational narratives : increasing representational authenticity

This paper presents an integrated, multi-layered approach to narrative inquiry, elucidating the evolving story of organisational culture through its members and their physical, textual, linguistic and visual dialogue. A dynamic joint venture scenario within the UK hi-technology sector was explored to advance understanding of the impact of transformation level change, specifically its influence on shared belief systems, values and behavioural norms. STRIKE – STructured Interpretation of the Knowledge Environment is introduced as an innovative technique to support narrative inquiry, providing a structured, unobtrusive framework to observe, record, evaluate and articulate the organisational setting. A manifestation of narrative in physical dialogue is illuminated from which the underlying emotional narrative can be surfaced. Focus groups were conducted alongside STRIKE to acquire a first order retrospective and contemporaneous narrative of culture and enable cross-method triangulation. Attention was given to non-verbal signals such as Chronemic, Paralinguistic, Kinesic and Proxemic communication and participants were also afforded opportunities to develop creative output in order to optimise engagement. Photography was employed to enrich STRIKE observation and document focus group output, affording high evidential value whilst providing a frame of reference for reflection. These tools enable a multiplicity of perspectives on narrative as part of methological bricolage. Rich, nuanced and multi-textured understanding is developed, as well as the identification of connections, timbre and subjugated knowledge. A highly emotional and nostalgic context was established with actors’ sense of self strongly aligned with the pre-joint venture organisation and its brand values, norms and expectations. Credibility and authenticity of findings is enhanced through data triangulation indicating traceability across methods, and from the contextual preservation attained through STRIKE. The multi-layered approach presented can facilitate researcher reflexivity and sense-making, while for the audience, it may be employed to help communicate and connect research findings. In particular, STRIKE demonstrates utility, quality and efficacy as a design artefact following ex-post evaluation. This systematic method of narrative inquiry is suitable for standardisation and alongside a diagnostic/prescriptive capacity, affords both researcher and practictioner value in its application

A social insight into bereavement and reproductive loss

Abstract not available