Memorials, mourning and memory: A process-experiential approach
Research Question
How do people experience, interpret and position themselves within memorials sites? How does this differ between recent minimalist ‘counter’-memorials and more traditional heroically themed sites?
Project Description
This project explores how people make sense of and relate to contemporary memorial sites, which in contrast to traditional ones are purposely built to generate different interpretations and ways of interacting with them. Along these lines, it analyses visitors’ in-situ ongoing experience and interpretation of different kinds of memorials, using an innovative new subjective camera methodology that records first person video and audio. Analysis focuses on norms of behaviour, expressiveness, the wider societal context, emotions and embodied meaning-making on site.
Selected Publications
Wagoner, B. (2017). The Constructive Mind: Bartlett’s psychology in reconstruction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wagoner, B. (2018). Handbook of Culture and Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wagoner, B., Bresco, I., Awad, S. (2019). Remembering as a Cultural Process. New York: Springer.