PhD Researcher Siobhán Doyle presented a paper at the Curating the Great War conference at the Imperial War Museum, London in September.

The conference formed part of IWM London’s 2018 Making a New World season, which explores responses to the war in its aftermath and attempts to rebuild the world. The theme of the conference was how the First World War was and is represented and interpreted in museums across the world and was organised by the University of Bristol and the IWM Institute.

Siobhán spoke as part of the ‘Museums, Communities and the Centenary of the Great War’ session, which addressed exhibitions of the Great War, in celebration of its centenary from 2014 to 2018. Her paper discussed practices of representing death in commemorative exhibitions, through a historical analysis of Joseph Plunkett’s rosary beads on display at the National Museum of Ireland. Siobhán’s  paper interrogated the way the exhibition presents a particular narrative of reconciliation and links the Great War with the 1916 Rising through the display of Plunkett’s last possession in the ‘Proclaiming a Republic: The 1916 Rising’ exhibition in Collins Barracks.

You can read more about the conference here:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/events/curating-the-great-war