CMNH organises several different types of event:

  • Annual symposium
  • Annual research seminar series
  • Annual postgraduate research conference
  • National and international conferences and symposia
  • Occasional seminars and events
  • Book launches

Annual symposium

Usually a one-day event involving invited speakers – visiting researchers as well as members of the Centre and the University of Brighton – and taking place during either the late autumn or early spring terms, the annual symposium enables sustained debate on a theme chosen to develop (and create a public profile for) work in one of the centre’s fields of interest or project areas.

  • 2008-09: Launch symposium: New Directions in the Study of Memory, Narrative and Histories
  • 2009-10 : Archives and the Politics of History and Memory
  • 2010-11: The Arab Spring: Symposium to mark the first anniversary
  • 2011-12: History, Memory and Green Imaginaries
  • 2012-13: New Approaches to the History and Memory of War and Conflict
  • 2014-15: Heritage in the 21st Century
  • 2015-16: Abusing Power. The Visual Politics of Satire
  • 2016-17: Reparative Histories 2: The Making, Re-Making and Un-Making of ‘Race’
  • 2017-18: Critical Histories
  • 2018-19: Post Industrial Imaginaries: beyond progress, memory and loss
  • 2019-20: Histories, narratives and cultures of death, dying and anticipatory grief (postponed due to Covid 19)
  • 2020-21: Anti-Racist Research in the Age of Black Lives Matter

Visit our events pages for details of our Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories annual symposia

Annual research seminar series

Usually a series of six seminars programmed in advance and taking place monthly on Wednesday early evenings during the autumn and spring terms. The series may link different approaches to a particular research theme, or offer a diversity of subjects that speak to a wider range of the Centre’s interests and bring together different constituencies of scholarly and public engagement.

Annual Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers conference

This annual whole-day event aims to showcase research by, and enable debate between, PGR and ECR researchers at the University of Brighton and at other universities nationally and internationally, as well as independent postdoctoral scholars, engaged with current themes, methods and theories in interdisciplinary research on history, memory and temporality. It is organised by CMNH’s PGR and ECR membership on a topic of their own choosing and features a keynote by a leading scholar in the field. For a number of years it was organised in collaboration with the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research at the University of Sussex.

  • 2008-09: Memories Narratives and Histories: first annual Brighton/Sussex postgraduate conference
  • 2009–10: Public Lives, Private Lives; New Research Across the Disciplines
  • 2010-11: The Emotions in History, Memory and Storytelling
  • 2011-12: Working with Narrative, Memory and Life History: A Postgraduate Afternoon for Sharing Projects, Skills and Job Experiences
  • 2013-14: Researching Uniqueness: How life history research entails singular questions and special outcomes.
  • 2014-15: Internationalism of Life History Research
  • 2015-16: Subversive Histories for Public Cultures. The politics of life history research
  • 2016-17: Life History and Life Writing Research: Critical and Creative Approaches
  • 2017-18: Time, Memory, and Conflict: Critical Approaches
  • 2018-19: Memory, nostalgia and the politics of space and place
  • 2019-20: Cancelled due to Covid 19
  • 2020-21: Transgenerational Memory

Visit our events pages for details of our joint University of Brighton / University of Sussex postgraduate annual conferences 

National and international conferences and symposia

The Centre organises on an occasional basis research conferences and symposia on topics of national and international significance, chosen to develop one of its major project areas.

  • National Conference: War, Silence and Memory in Modern Britain, 9th Feb 2011 at The Royal Marines Museum, Portsmouth
  • International Conference: World War II – Popular Culture and Cultural Memory, 13th –15th Jul 2011 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton
  • National Conference: The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain, 11th–13th Jul 2012 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton
  • Symposium: Hearing Her: New Feminist Oral Histories, 11th Apr 2013, University of Sussex
  • National conference: War: An Emotional History, 9th Jul 2014, The British Academy, London
  • International Conference: Reparative Histories: Radical Narratives of ‘Race’ and Resistance, 11th-12th Sept 2014 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton
  • Symposium: The Brighton ‘Grand Hotel’ Bombing: History, Memory and Political Theatre, 15th- 16th Oct 2014 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton
  • Symposium: The Armenian Tragedy: A Commemorative Symposium 29th October 2015 Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
  • International Conference: Reparative Histories 2: The Making, Re-Making and Un-Making of ‘Race’, 6th – 7th April, 2017 at Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
  • Conference: Afterlives of Violence: Contested Geographies of Past, Present and Future. University of Brighton, 29th June 2017.
  • Symposium: Blackness and the Complex Temporalities of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. 1st June 2018. M2 Boardroom, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
  • Conference: The Radical Sixties: Aesthetics, Politics and Histories of Solidarity. 28th to 29th June 2019. Grand Parade, University of Brighton and The Old Courtroom.
  • Conference: Engels in Eastbourne 23rd to 24th June 2020. Eastbourne Campus (postponed due to Covid 19)
  • Conference: The Neo-Victorian and the Late-Victorian: Texts, Media, Politics. 3rd – 4th September 2020. Grand Parade Brighton (postponed due to Covid 19)

Visit our events pages for details of our conferences and symposia

Visiting professors: lectures and workshops

The Centre invites Visiting Professors to give open lectures and run workshops.

  • Professor Tina Campt (Abigail R. Cohen Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris and Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Tuesday 4th June to Friday 8th June 2019.
  • Professor Sean Field (University of Cape Town) Monday 17th June to Friday 21st June 2019.
  • Professor Marisa Fuentes (Rutgers School of Arts and Science) Public Lecture Monday 16th March 2020. Refuse Bodies, Disposable Lives: A History of the Human and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (cancelled due to Covid 19)
  • Professor Marisa Fuentes (Rutgers School of Arts and Science) Workshop (cancelled due to Covid 19)

Occasional seminars and other public events

These may be organised on an ad hoc basis to offer a platform to Visiting Researchers, or to accompany and support a collaborative project, an exhibition, or similar occasion.

  • Black History Month Debate: ‘Are black people excluded from the historic buildings of the places in which they live?’ 16th Oct 2010, Education Room at Brighton Museum
  • Seminar: Our Dancing Feet, 2nd Nov 2013, Grand Parade, University of Brighton
  • Special seminar: Shirley Gunn (Director, Human Rights and Media Centre, Cape Town, South Africa), Screening and discussion of HRMC’s documentary film We Never Give Up II (dir. by Cahal McLaughlin, 2012), about the Khulumani survivors of apartheid support group and its campaign for reparations in post-apartheid South Africa. 22nd April 2013, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
  • Special seminar: Dr Keir Reeves (National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University, Australia), ‘Visiting the Past. Histories of Commemoration and Competing Narratives of Remembering War’, 27th June 2013, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
  • Seminar: Healing War Through Art, 7th May 2014, Grand Parade, University of Brighton
  • Special seminar: Professor Albert Grundlingh (Stellenbosch University) Mutating Memories and the Making of a Wartime Myth in South Africa: Remembering the SS Mendi Disaster 1917- 2007 in collaboration with Gateways to the First World War. 3rd February 2016, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
  • Seminar: Tina van der Vlies (Erasmus University) Metaphor and the resonance of events in the historical narration, 15th June 2016, Grand Parade, University of Brighton.
  • Screening: The Battle of the Somme (1916) with Gateways to the First World War, The Fedora Group and The Duke of Yorks Picturehouse. 8th November 2016.
  • Research Workshop: ‘Death and Myth: Towards a Biopolitics of Memory’ with Visiting Research Fellow Charlottte Heath-Kelly. Wednesday, 18th January 2017, 1–3pm. Grand Parade.
  • Seminar: The Bombings of Barcelona and London: memories of a shared history with European Observatory on Memories (EDROM) 23rd May 2017, Imperial War Museum London.
  • Seminar: Place, body and story in the divided city: Ordinary agency in the everyday. Johanna Mannergren Selimovic (Swedish Institute of International Affairs and Visiting Scholar at Vesalius College, Brussels). 3rd May 2017.
  • Seminar: Memory, identity and literacy. Violence and education in Mexico. Professor César Correa Arias (University of Guadalajara). 21st June, 2017.
  • Seminar: The Militant Antifascism in Rome during the Seventies: constructing oral sources on the narrative of political violence. Jessica Matteo (Sapienza University, Rome) 30th May, 2018
  • Research Workshop: Rethinking ‘the Past’: The Cultural Politics of History, Memory and Temporality. A day of presentations and discussion featuring researchers from The Uses of the Past Research Group at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, Boardroom M2, Grand Parade site, University of Brighton, Tuesday 26 June 2018.
  • Health, Heritage and Memory Hub: Cross-disciplinary  Networking Event. A50 Checkland Building, Falmer Campus, University of Brighton, Friday 22nd March 2019.
  • Archiving Spontaneous Memorials: The Shoreham Community Archive. Wendy Walker (County Archivist, West Sussex Record Office), University of Brighton, 25th November 2019.
  • Seminar: The Asset Strippers and the Asset Hiders: On Machines, Memory and Mutability. Professor Caitlin DeSilvey (University of Exeter), 201 Dorset Place, 11th December 2019.
  • Seminar: Rubble and Redevelopment. 5 -7pm G4 Grand Parade, 20th May 2020 (postponed due to Covid 19)
  • Online exhibition and event: Correspondences: a conversation about art, memory and heritage. 15th June 2021.

Visit our events pages for further details on our conferences, symposia and seminar that lie outside the annual programmes

Book launches

The Centre hosts events that mark, celebrate, and open up discussion around the publication of a book, written either by a CMNH member or by a local author whose work coincides with the Centre’s interests and activities.