Cold War Museology: How museums shape our understanding of the Cold War

National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh

We invite interested participants from across disciplines to join us for a conference on Cold War museology, 12-14 June 2023.

Speakers from historical, museological, heritage and memory studies backgrounds will explore the challenges of conceptualising the Cold War in a museological context. Papers will address several interconnected themes on: material collected in Cold War museums, temporality and periodisation, challenges and contentions and the ephemerality and intangibility associated with Cold War history.

Without a more precise and concentrated discussion of the issues and questions raised by collecting and exhibiting Cold War material globally museums cannot produce accessible, meaningful, and authentic public displays.

We look forward to encouraging a lively inter-disciplinary discussion and beginning a conversation with long-term museological impact.

Keynote speakers: Professor Rhiannon Mason, Newcastle University: Professor Odd Arne Westad, Yale University.

List of papers:

To register for the conference please email Marianne Spence at National Museums Scotland: m.spence@nms.ac.uk by 31 March 2023.

Registration and refreshments are provided. There are no additional funds for conference travel and accommodation.

This conference is part of the AHRC-funded Materialising the Cold War project (Project number AH/V001078/1). The project is a collaboration between University of Stirling and National Museums Scotland, led by Principal Investigator Sam Alberti, Co-investigator Holger Nehring and Research Fellows Jim Gledhill and Jessica Douthwaite. We thank the AHRC and National Museums Scotland for their support.

Image courtesy of National Museums Scotland.

Theme by the University of Stirling