Difficult Pasts: the Ethics and Aesthetics of Telling Difficult Histories

This conference, organized in collaboration with the University of Virginia, University of Michigan and UCLA, brings together leading scholars and practitioners from Europe and North America to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to interrogate the challenges facing historians, artists and museum professionals as they seek to address difficult or traumatic pasts in various contexts.

The theme of the program is the ethics and aesthetics of the study and communication of difficult pasts. Specifically, how can these stories be related accurately, sensitively, and ethically; are there methodologies or styles of writing and art that are particularly appropriate when it comes to responding to atrocity; and how do we support archivists, curators, researchers, and artists who engage in sharing and documenting traumatic pasts?
The program will convene historians, archaeologists, archivists, artists, and public history and museum professionals to provide multiple perspectives on the issue. Following two days of closed workshop discussion among the participants, Monday evening and all day Tuesday will be devoted to a keynote lecture and public symposium focusing on the various ways in which scholars, artists, and public history and museum professionals deal with difficult histories.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Centre for Public History, Queen's University Belfast