27th Jun 2013 5:00pm-6:45pm

Grand Parade

Dr Keir Reeves, Monash University, Australia

This presentation investigates the sometimes-fraught intersection of history and heritage. In doing so it engages with recent discussions and debates about commemoration of war and the process of history making. It will also discuss the role of heritage in influencing popular memories of war in the present day. This presentation stems from comparative research into conflict and remembrance (including the United Kingdom, Singapore, Western Flanders, mainland South East Asia and the Pacific War). The discussion begins from the premise that Commonwealth war heritage and memory in the early twenty-first century is best understood within the context of forthcoming centenary of the Great War.

Dr Keir Reeves is a cultural historian based at Monash University in Australia where he is a Senior Monash Research Fellow at the National Centre for Australian Studies in the School of Journalism, Australian and Indigenous Studies. In 2013 he is a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall Cambridge and is also a Visiting Researcher in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research where he is working with the Cambridge Heritage Research Group. Keir co-edited (contributing) Places of Pain and Shame Dealing with ‘difficult heritage’ (Routledge, 2009) with Bill Logan and more recently has contributed to the Bruce Scates led Anzac Journeys: Walking the Battlefields of the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming August 2013).

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