Everyone’s welcome to join us for lecture #22 in our Going Public series!
This lecture is part of our ‘Legacy’ engagement, curated by Gisèle Gantois.
BRITT BAILLIE: ‘Agonistic Heritage in the Quest for Decolonisation’
Memorials are often purported to be a symbolic means of recognizing victims and achieving closure, which thus enables a (re)turn to ‘peacetime’ norms. Yet, memorials are also mobilized to condone physical, symbolic, or structural violence in the present. Thus, they often fail to release societies from cycles of violence fuelled by the legacies of past conflicts or oppression.
This lecture will draw on examples from Africa and beyond to illustrate why a shift to an agonistic approach to heritage could play a vital role in the movement for decolonisation.
Britt Baillie is a founding member of the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research at the University of Cambridge, and Honorary Fellow at the Wits City Institute. Previously, she was the Research Lead for FuturePart, a Research Fellow on the University of Pretoria’s Capital Cities Institutional Research Theme, an Affiliated Lecturer at the Division of Archaeology (University of Cambridge), a Post-Doctoral Research Associate on the Conflict in Cities and the Contested State ESRC funded research project (University of Cambridge); a Post-Doctoral Researcher on the AHRC/NWO funded Landscapes of War, Trauma and Occupation project (University of Cambridge); an AHRC funded Early Career Researcher on the Cambridge Community Heritage Project, a Researcher Fellow at Vrije Universiteit University Amsterdam and the Director of Studies for Archaeology and Anthropology at Peterhouse. Dr. Baillie completed her PhD in Archaeology and Heritage Management at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge in 2011. Her recent books include: Locating Urban Conflicts: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Everyday (Palgrave, 2013, co-edited with Wendy Pullan), African Heritage Challenges: Communities and Sustainable Development (Palgrave, 2020, co-edited with Marie-Louise Sørensen), and Synchronous Pasts: Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia (Palgrave, forthcoming, co-edited with Gruia Bădescu and Francesco Mazzuchelli).
The GOING PUBLIC program of the Faculty of Architecture is a series of lectures, exhibitions and publications organized throughout the year highlighting certain themes and topics that are important within each of the 4+1 Engagements: Urban Cultures, Mediating Tactics, Craftsmanship, Legacy and The Brussels Way. www.blog-archkuleuven.be