A symposium & Invited In Conversation with Secretary Bunch (Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution) and Kathryn Thompson (Chief Executive, National Museums NI) co-hosted by the Centre for Public History, QUB, and the Smithsonian Institution
- Date(s)
- March 11, 2025
- Location
- SC Johnson Center, 1st Floor West, National Museum of American History, Washington DC
- Time
- 20:30 - 16:30
This all-day symposium, a follow-up to Secretary Bunch's visit to Queen's last year and the summative event of the 2024-25 George Washington University-Queen's University Belfast Divided Societies Seminar, asks what role museums and public history more broadly can play in divided societies. It will open with a conversation with Secretary Bunch, 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and Kathryn Thompson, Director of National Museums NI, about how museums can approach difficult histories and engage divided communities in exploring contested pasts.
Panels throughout the day carry on the discussion about different approaches taken to addressing difficult or contested pasts.
Panel 1. Difficult Histories, Creative Approaches (Chair: Loren Kajikawa, GWU)
Briony Widdis, QUB. Empire and Extended Identities
Laura Schiavo, GWU. Difficult History and Emerging Practice: Potential and Pitfalls in Exhibition Development
Panel 2. Walls and Borders: Divided Communities & Marginalised Voices (Chair: Gordon Mantler, GWU)
Olwen Purdue, QUB. Our Place: Our Stories. Oral Histories on Belfast’s peace lines
Lisa Page, GWU. Navigating Identity in Divided Communities
Steve Velasquez, NMAH. Collecting Along the Border
Panel 3. Museums in Divided Societies: Restorative History and Conflict Transformation (Chair, Arie Dubnov, GWU)
Karen Logan, NMNI, The Ulster Museum’s Troubles and Beyond gallery
Dani Merriman and Modupe Labode, NMAH. Restorative History and the Emmitt Till Marker
Laia Balcells, Georgetown University. Museums and Conflict transformation: Georgetown-QUB project in Belfast