Education as site of memory: developing a research agenda

ABSTRACT

The field of memory studies tends to focus attention on the ‘3Ms’ – museums, monuments, memorials – as sites where memories are constructed, communicated, and contested. Where education is identified as a site for memory, the focus is often narrowly on what is or is not communicated within curricula or textbooks, assuming that schools simply pass on messages agreed or struggled over elsewhere. This article explores the possibilities opened when educative processes are not taken as stable and authoritative sites for transmitting historical narratives, but instead as spaces of contestation, negotiation and cultural production. With a focus on ‘difficult histories’ of recent conflict and historical injustice, we develop a research agenda for education as a site of memory and show how this can illuminate struggles over dominant historical narratives at various scales, highlighting agencies that educational actors bring to making sense of the past.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory studies
• history teaching
• difficult histories
• education and conflict
• historical memory

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the GW4 (gw4.ac.uk) [Accelerator Grant, Transformative History Educatio; Initiator Grant; Transformative History Education].

Notes on contributors

Julia Paulson

Julia Paulson is Associate Professor of Education, Peace and Conflict at the University of Bristol, UK.

Nelson Abiti

Nelson Abiti is a Curator at Uganda National Museum.

Julian Bermeo Osorio

Julian Bermeo Osorio is a researcher for the Colombian Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition and formerly led the Pedagogy team at Bogotá's Centre for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation.

Carlos Arturo Charria Hernández

Carlos Arturo Charria Hernández is the Secretary of Education in Cúcuta, Colombia and former Director of Bogota's Centre for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation.

Duong Keo

Duong Keo is a Lecturer in History at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and is a Researcher at the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre.

Peter Manning

Peter Manning is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bath, UK.

Lizzi O. Milligan

Lizzi O. Milligan is a Senior Lecturer in International Education at the University of Bath, UK.

Kate Moles

Kate Moles is a Lecturer in Sociology at Cardiff University, UK.

Catriona Pennell

Catriona Pennell is Associate Professor of Modern History and Memory Studies at the University of Exeter, UK.

Sangar Salih

Sangar Salih is Director of the Peace and Freedom Organisation in Erbil, Iraq.

Kelsey Shanks

Kelsey Shanks is the Global Challenges Research Fund Challenge leader for Education and is a Senior Lecturer at the UNESCO Centre at the University of Ulster, UK.