Nuclear Cultural Heritage

Nuclear Cultural Heritage: From Knowledge to Practice was a research networking project that focuses on the emerging field of nuclear cultural heritage, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in 2018-2022. It aimed to establish links between national and international nuclear cultural heritage researchers and the heritage sector on the one hand, and the nuclear sector on the other.

The P.I. and director of the project was Dr Egle Rindzeviciute, Associate Professor of Sociology at Kingston University London, the UK.

The project has ended, but please visit the follow on project NuSPACES: http://www.nuspaces.eu.

The notion of nuclear cultural heritage is new to heritage studies and practice: it refers to a wide range of tangible and intangible objects, such as decommissioned power plants, museum exhibits, landscapes and communities that are associated with the civil and military nuclear industry.

The concept of nuclear cultural heritage that this project will develop will provide ways of responding to pressing challenges experienced by nuclear nations, such as the management of nuclear waste and military arsenals, the future of the nuclear energy industry, and the need to reassess the wider social and cultural legacy of the nuclear past.

This research networking project will provide an international forum for leading social science and humanities scholars and heritage practitioners to examine the state of the art in this field and identify common issues in relation to collecting, interpreting and governing nuclear cultural heritage.

Could cultural heritage help open up the nuclear industry to the public? How does nuclear cultural heritage relate to the established forms of industrial and historical heritage? What is the role of the public in the processes of the collection, interpretation and governance of nuclear cultural heritage? Can nuclear cultural heritage be considered as a form of difficult heritage? What can we learn from the different national and institutional approaches to the making of nuclear cultural heritage?

In order to address these questions, the proposed network will gather participants representing such diverse fields as sociology, archaeology, curatorship, history and museum practice. The proposed network is limited to exchange among invited scholars and practitioners.

If you are interested in the ongoing research on nuclear cultural heritage, please get in touch with the P.I.:

Dr Egle Rindzeviciute

Faculty of Business and Social Sciences

School of Law, Social and Behavioural Sciences

Kingston University

Penrhyn Road

Kingston upon Thames

Surrey KT1 2EE

United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)20 8417 9000 Extension: #62347

Email: e.rindzeviciute (a) kingston.ac.uk

Please also visit the website of the sister project Atomic Heritage Goes Critical (P.I. Dr Anna Storm, Stockholm University).

Nuclear Cultural Heritage is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Kingston University London.

Header image © Agne Gintalaite  all rights reserved