Materialising the Cold War | National Museums Scotland

In June 2023, in the National Museum of Scotland, over 60 participants from historical, heritage and memory studies backgrounds explored the challenges of conceptualising the Cold War in a museum context.

Read Dr Jessica Douthwaite’s reflections on the conference on the Materialising the Cold War blog.

Dr Sam Alberti is Director of Collections at National Museums Scotland, and an Honorary Professor in Heritage Studies at the University of Stirling. For twenty years he has worked at the intersection of museums and universities, first in Manchester, then as Director of Museums and Archives at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (including the Hunterian Museum), while holding visiting research appointments in London, Philadelphia, and Edinburgh. His recent practice has focussed on the role of museums in the climate emergency and Cold War museology.

Professor Holger Nehring is Chair of Contemporary European History at the University of Stirling. He has worked on the history of social movements (especially peace movements) and the history of the Cold War (especially Cold War military infrastructure) and British and West German foreign policy. Together with Stefan Berger (University of Bochum, Germany) he co-edits the book series Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Before coming to Scotland, Holger completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before moving to various academic positions at the University of Sheffield.

Dr Jessica Douthwaite is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Stirling working on the collaboration with National Museums Scotland, Materialising the Cold War. Her Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD based at IWM, London and University of Strathclyde was titled Voices of the Cold War in Britain, 1945-1962 and awarded in 2018. She is currently writing a monograph which explores how the national and international landscapes of post-war Britain contextualised and influenced civilian experiences of Cold War security. She specialises in oral history methodology, gender and cultural studies and international politics.

Dr Sarah Harper is Research Fellow at National Museums Scotland and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Stirling working on the Materialising the Cold War project. She completed an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD in 2022. She worked with the University of Stirling and National Museums Scotland (NMS) on her project ‘Bombers, Bunkers and Badges: The Cold War Materialised in National Museums Scotland.’ This research utilised the collections of NMS to examine how ‘Cold War’ meanings have become attached to artefacts in the museum and how influential people and place are in ascribing these meanings. Prior to her PhD, Sarah was Collections and Research Manager at The Devil’s Porridge Museum and has a master’s degree in Preventive Conservation.

Dr Jim Gledhill was a Research Fellow at National Museums Scotland and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Stirling working on the Materialising the Cold War project between 2021–2023. He was previously curator of social history at the Museum of London and York Castle Museum and more recently curator of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Museum at Edinburgh Castle. He specialises in contemporary British social and military history, international politics and heritage studies. 

Linden Williamson is the project’s Administrator at National Museums Scotland.

Samuel J.M.M. Alberti & Holger Nehring (2021): The Cold War in European museums – filling the ‘empty battlefield’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2021.1954054

Jessica Douthwaite (2022): ‘Is Radioactive Iodine Present Equally in the Cream on Milk as in the Milk Itself?’: Lonely Sources and the Gendered history of Cold War Britain. Gender & History, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12643

Holger Nehring (2022), War Times: Layers of History in Russia’s War against Ukraine. Labour History Review, https://doi.org/10.3828/lhr.2022.11