Conference Information

Date: Friday 15- Saturday 16 April, 2011

Venue: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
University of Cambridge
Downing Street
Cambridge CB2 3DZ
United Kingdom

For further information about location, transport and accommodation, please go to the directions page.

Conference Abstract:

The process of memorializing and commemorating people and events has come under scrutiny in recent years. Controversies have been sparked by memorials. Some commemorative events have become stage settings for occasionally violent confrontations between different memorial narratives, and the relationship between history and memory is being put through a ‘stress test’ of sorts. Though memorial processes have a long history, this new scrutiny has given rise to important questions about their social function, the intentionality behind commemorative gestures and their impact: Do memorials help us forget? Are they reconciliatory? Who do commemorative events exclude? What purpose to they serve? Do they help us not repeat the mistakes of the past? Why do people use memorials? Who uses them? How and when are ‘forgotten’ memorials reinvigorated by communities? With these questions new terms are also emerging: ‘spontaneous shrines’ (Santino 1992), ‘memorial mania’ (Doss 2008), ‘grassroots memorials’ (Sánchez-Carretero and Margy 2010).

This 12th edition of the Cambridge Heritage Seminar seeks to bring together researchers and practitioners from a wide array of disciplines and communities of practice to explore what and how we choose to commemorate and the impact that this has on our own memories and identities, and thus on heritage.

How to take part:

There are three ways of taking part in this seminar: presenting a paper, providing a poster, being a participating audience member.

The call for papers is now closed.

Registration closed on 1 April 2011.

Photograph taken in the town of Otxandio, Basque Country, Spain, during a memorial service for the victims of a bombing which took place on 22 July 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War.