Samuel J.M.M. Alberti & Holger Nehring (2022) The Cold War in European museums – filling the ‘empty battlefield’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 28:2, 180-199, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2021.1954054 Recent historical research has analysed the Cold War as an ‘imaginary war’, an interpretation that poses specific challenges for displaying the conflict in museums. In contrast to well-established representations of the First and Second World
The Materialising the Cold War project will soon end. It has been a busy, productive three years, during which our research raised as many questions as it answered – not least because the developing global context altered the definitional lens on ‘Cold War’ topics. Reflecting on the ambitions and outcomes of our project, the team
Reflecting on insights from museum professionals and our research from the ‘Materialising the Cold War’ project, we have created the ‘Cold War in Museums’ toolkit. Designed as an informative guide for museum and heritage professionals, as well as volunteers, the toolkit offers advice on collecting, interpreting and displaying Cold War history. We encourage users to
By Sarah Harper In early April, Northumbria University Newcastle hosted the Researching War through Ephemera conference, welcoming international speakers and attendees. This conference was the concluding event of a three-year Arts Humanities Research Council funded project ‘Ephemera and writing about war in Britain, 1914 to the present’ led by Dr Ann-Marie Einhaus, Professor Tony Williams,
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Jessica Douthwaite, recently published her article titled, “Covering the ‘Scottish position adequately’: Planning Civil Defence in Post-war Scotland, 1948–59” in the Journal of Modern British History. The article considers Cold War civil defence policy and planning through a regional lens, arguing that the specificities of Scotland’s governing structures, Second World War experiences and
The Materialising the Cold War team at University of Stirling and National Museums Scotland have produced a three-part film series on the Cold War in Scotland. These three short films, ‘Scotland: Cold War Battleground’, ‘Nuclear Scotland’ and ‘The Cold War and Scottish Society’ draw on never-before-seen archives, object collections, footage, and interviews with experts to
From Monday 12 June to Wednesday 14 June, the Materialising the Cold War team brought together international experts from across historical, museological, heritage and memory studies backgrounds to discuss Cold War Museology at a conference held at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. What questions are raised by collecting and exhibiting Cold War material in
We invite interested participants from across disciplines to join us for a conference entitled Cold War Museology: How museums shape our understanding of the Cold War, 12-14 June 2023. To find out about the conference programme and to register to attend please see the Events page.
Professor Holger Nehring recently published an essay in Labour History Review entitled ‘War Times: Layers of history in Russia’s war on Ukraine’. To read the article follow this link: https://doi.org/10.3828/lhr.2022.11 Full citation: Peter Gurney, Matthew Grant, Grace Huxford, Christoph Laucht, Jennifer Luff, Holger Nehring. 2022. “Round Table: The New Cold War.” Labour History Review 87 (3): 277-312.
In this essay for the Scottish Association for Teachers of History (SATH) Yearbook 2022, Jessica Douthwaite considers how to teach the end of one era and beginning of another in schools without diminishing the contextual interplay between the two. Focusing on the years that bridge Second World War and Cold War histories she offers three
– this was the title of a boundary-pushing exhibition held in the grounds of a military airbase in 1999. The base, adjacent to the Norwegian Aviation Museum in Bodø, gave curators Karl Kleve and Bodil Nyaas an apt location in which to consider how the Cold War framed contemporary society. They had been keen, both