The Social Life of the War Relic: D-Day Objects at the Intersection of Personal, Family, and National Cultures of Remembrance

This project will recover and record the 'biographies' of a select number of objects within the collections of The D-Day Story.

It will examine these objects as 'vectors' of memory which exist at the intersection of personal, family, and national cultures of remembrance, and in doing so it will enrich our understanding of the history and memory of D-Day, a pivotal event of the Second World War of profound significance to social and family history (as much as to military history).

The project purposefully includes substantive scope for the Doctoral researcher to shape the fine details of its design, specifically regarding the number and type of objects at its centre, and it contributes to a stated priority of Portsmouth Museums (the 'meaning' veterans and their families attach to objects).

At Loughborough, the project will be supervised by Dr Sam Edwards, a leading expert on the cultural memory of D-Day, and by Prof. Emily Keightley, an internationally recognized authority on memory studies.

The project is collaborative in design, bringing together the collections of The D-Day Story (and the expertise of Andrew Whitmarsh and Katy Ball) with leading researchers at Loughborough.

It has the potential to deliver research-informed curatorial guidance (for The D-Day Story, as well as for the military museum sector more generally) aimed at widening audience access by diversifying the story(s) a museum's objects might explore and recount.