Bente Geving, Margit Ellinor: Forgotten Images

Maria Six-Hohenbalken, Ambiguities of Remembering in Diaspora

John Timberlake, Another Country: Nuclear War as False Memory

Erica Lehrer, Cur(at)ing Jewish History in Poland: Experiments Observed and Undertaken

T. Shanaathanan, Architecture of Memory/ Memory of Architecture: Art, Memory and Conflict in Sri Lanka

Rita Duffy, Remember Who You Are

Rafal Betlejewski, "I Miss You, Jew!" Re-writing Polish Identity: Including Jedwabne into the Collective Narrative

The project is designed to initiate new relationships and exchanges among the academic, policy, curating and artistic communities. Supported by the European Science Foundation (Humanities in the European Research Area, HERA). Traumatic pasts have complex and often dramatic influences on the present. The conference will explore creative engagements with controversial pasts in art practice, curating and museums, establishing a dialogue among diverse participants. Read more about our theme and aims on the project website www.open.ac.uk/Arts/disturbing-pasts/.

On 21st and 22nd May the Department of Art History and Department of Geography (Leon Wainwright and Clare Melhuish) hosted the international meeting ‘Caribbean Urban Aesthetics’, at The Open University’s Walton Hall campus in Milton Keynes. This was a preliminary workshop to bring together scholars and professionals from various disciplines and institutions, sharing a mutual interest in this field of studies both within and beyond the Caribbean itself, and to explore the possibilities for future collaborative research.