Presentation by Theme Leadership Fellow: Professor Andrew Thompson

1. Call for Co-ordinating Centres to
Commemorate the Centenary
of the First World War
&
the Care for the Future Theme
Theme Leadership Fellow:
Professor Andrew Thompson
University of Exeter
a.s.thompson@exeter.ac.uk
Project Co-ordinator
Ms Christine Boyle
c.boyle@exeter.ac.uk

2. Care for the Future:
Thinking Forward through the Past
The relationship between the past, present and future
shapes our understanding of the world around us. Whether it
is the perceived consequences of past events, the urgency of
present concerns, or the challenges of real or imagined
futures, the structures of time intersect with and inform our
sense of ourselves in myriad ways.
Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past
affords an opportunity for researchers in the arts and
humanities to explore the dynamic relationship that exists
between past, present and future through a temporally
inflected lens.

3. Care for the Future: Sites of Engagement
5 major sub-themes:
• Questions of temporality and history
• Cultural notions of the future
• Environmental change and sustainability
• Inter- and cross-generational communication, justice and
exchange
• Trauma, conflict and memory: transitions to new futures

4. Trauma, conflict and memory:
transitions to new futures
Woodward, Caring for post-military futures:
alternative development futures for former military
sites in the UK
Image: Simon Burchell, Wiki Commons
Exploring ‘What does it mean to
come to terms with the past’?
• Reproduction of past conflicts
across generations and the
dynamics of cultural memory
• Reconciling of competing
memories of past traumas, and
how (far) individuals and
societies are able mourn, forget
and forgive.
This sub-theme also includes issues of restitution, reparation and
reconciliation, and their effects on how aspects of our past are invoked
and interpreted, as well as the ways in which the past is politicised for
the purposes of shaping different and alternative futures.

5. Exploratory awards
Image: http://ww1intheclassroom.exeter.ac.uk/
‘How is the First World War taught in English
schools, and what does that mean for English
cultural memory of the war?’
The First World War in the Classroom
Dr Catriona Pennell, PI
‘What makes a centenary different to any
other commemoration?’
The Significance of the
Centenary
Dr Joanne Sayner, PI
Image: Screenshot, Google image search, ‘Centenary’

6. Care for the Future links to call
• Contribute to AHRC’s Care for the Future Theme, i.e. through
critical reflection on issues such as processes of commemoration,
cross-cultural and contested perspectives on the past, the
evolution and transmission of cultural memory and heritage.
• Foster two way dialogue between academic and public historical
research related to the First World War.
• Reflect on the purposes of centenary commemoration - what is
being remembered, for whom and why?
• Explore the different histories embedded in heritage.

7. Care for the Future links to call
• Whose voices are heard in commemoration and whose are not?
The selectivity of cultural memory, the diversity of perspectives
on the war from different types of community, including when
and why commemoration can become difficult and divisive.
• How the impact of the war itself, as well as its longer-term
legacies, are understood by the individuals and communities
affected by it.
• When and why commemoration can become difficult and
divisive.
• What can we learn from the way the centenary is marked across
different communities and countries?