Uses and Abuses of the Past: the Role of Presentism in Cultural Memory
Eligibility: UK/International (including EU) graduates with the required entry requirements
Duration: Full-Time – between three and three and a half years fixed term
Application deadline: 27 May 2025
Interview date: Will be confirmed to shortlisted candidates
Start date: September 2025
For further details contact: Dr Elizabeth Benjamin
Introduction
Society has a problem with representing its past. To be ‘too accurate’ is to miss opportunities to engage with contemporary audiences and to perpetuate stereotypes and marginalisations; to be ‘too inclusive’ is deemed reprehensibly inaccurate, ‘woke’, or politically correct. This leads to a struggle within cultural memory practices between opposing approaches of nostalgia and tradition; what in the French context has been termed a ‘war of memories’. Can ideological struggles over the experience of historical worlds be better directed towards achieving memory justice?
This project proposes a strategy to balance the need to engage with the past on its own terms with the critical usefulness of interpretation through contemporary values. The inquiry will select and investigate a series of objects or sites of cultural memory in order to explore the use of history as a tool for debating contemporary social and cultural issues given clarity through their expression of an imagined collective past.
Project details
Studying creation and evolution of sites and objects of cultural memory in an international context, incorporating interdisciplinary research methods appropriate to cultural memory and the subject of the project’s case studies, this inquiry will ask: How is presentism viewed by creators and users of sites and objects of cultural memory? How do creatives engage in cultural memory practice as distinct from historical enquiry? How do sites of contest over cultural memory and history offer agency for underrepresented or unheard populations?
The researcher will engage with a targeted range of expressions of cultural memory, selecting 3-5 case studies from both the global south and north, to most clearly illustrate the project’s decolonial approach. Examples might include monuments and memorials, education programmes, heritage institutions, and cultural artefacts across literature, visual culture, and beyond. Case studies will be encouraged from the established sector of galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), and also from film, television, gaming and the performing arts. The diversity of the cases themselves, combined with the theoretical postcolonial approach, will allow for an advanced provocation of the value of presentism in contemporary society.
Funding
Tuition fees and bursary
Benefits
The successful candidate will receive comprehensive research training including technical, personal and professional skills. All researchers at Coventry University (from PhD to Professor) are part of the Doctoral Researcher College, which provides support with high-quality training and career development activities.
Entry requirements
- A minimum of a 2:1 first degree in a relevant discipline/subject area with a minimum 60% mark in the project element or equivalent with a minimum 60% overall module average.
PLUS
- The potential to engage in innovative research and to complete the PhD within 3.5 years.
- A minimum of English language proficiency (IELTS academic overall minimum score of 7.0 with a minimum of 6.5 in each component).
Additional requirements:
The applicant will be expected to put together their own proposal, and to be able to demonstrate the required quality of work. The proposal should include the chosen approach to the key research questions and methodologies, and an indicative list of potential case studies. Potential applicants are encouraged to contact the Director of Studies for an informal discussion in advance of application.
How to apply
To find out more about the project, please contact Dr Elizabeth Benjamin.
All applications require full supporting documentation, a covering letter, plus a 2000-word supporting statement showing how the applicant’s expertise and interests are relevant to the project.
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