"I have termed the past a foreign country; the future is not a country at all but a chimera"
Research Themes
Cultural heritage is a growing area of international research interest. Over recent years heritage research has shifted from a focus primarily upon practical aspects of conservation and heritage management to a more expanded, dynamic and theoretically informed multidisciplinary area of study, which addresses the social, political and economic dynamics of heritage-making and consumption. This includes attention to questions of identity, ownership and rights; public interpretations of the past; contested histories and memories; materiality, intangible and digital heritage; museums and tourism.
The University of Manchester is the home of a number of leading international scholars in this exciting and vibrant sphere of research. We are all based in disciplinary subject areas or interdisciplinary centres. However, this is an inherently interdisciplinary sphere of research, and Chimera provides a forum for information on research themes and individual research projects.
Memory, museums, monuments and memorials
What is the relationship between cultural heritage and the production of memory, identity and place? What roles do museums, monuments and memorials play in constructing, substantiating or challenging personal, cultural and collective memory? How does the (im)materiality, biography and social value of cultural heritage inflect how the past is interpreted, represented, forgotten or silenced in places and institutions of memory?
Material and intangible heritage and identity
What is the role of tangible and intangible heritage in the production of local and global identities? How do archaeological and historic sites function as symbols of local and national identities? How are issues of access, ownership, making, representing, narrating, displaying and managing heritage discussed both by institutions and by individuals and communities involved in the process? What are the implications of defining tangible and intangible heritage as cultural practice? How do memory, oral history, performance and community, family and personal history contribute to our understanding of heritage and its value?
Collecting, displaying and representation
How is history transformed into heritage? And what role does heritage play in the cultures of the museum, tourism, urban and regional regeneration? How do particular practices of acquisition, classification, display and interpretation of material culture shape identity-stories and identity possibilities? How are postcolonial or cosmopolitan identity strategies performed - or how might they be? How is cultural heritage consumed, experienced and reproduced?
Conservation and authenticity
What notions of value and authenticity are articulated and mobilised by conservation policies and strategies? What are the tensions, negotiations, and constraints that arise in the conservation practice? How is the authenticity of objects, sites and landscapes understood and negotiated by communities and institutions? What are the forms of expertise, methods and actors that impact on the way authenticity is re-defined through conservation theory and practice?
Digital heritage
How is cultural heritage represented, interpreted and communicated through digital media? How do digital media renegotiate processes of heritage interpretation through user interaction and participation? What are the challenges in the digital curation of tangible and intangible heritage? How are issues of authority, value, mediation and sustainability of digital heritage discussed? How do digital media merge the onsite with the online; the personal with the collective; the mundane with the institutional; and the ephemeral with the permanent?