We cordially invite you to the public lecture “Museums as political infrastructure?” by Prof. Dr. Susannah Eckersley. The lecture is part of the conference “Infrastructural Turn” at the German Historical Institute Warsaw.
Lecture in English
Moderation: Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
The power of museums within socio-political crises may seem insignificant. And yet, museums are actively targeted and consciously instrumentalized by political actors and activists to bolster their power and to push for action, particularly within so-called ‘culture wars’. At the same time there is deep public trust in museums – as institutions of heritage and memory - and practitioners see them as supporting collective democratic citizenship, particularly during ‘crises’. Although hard evidence for this ‘soft power’ argument remains limited, diverse actors increasingly mobilise heritage and memory for political purposes, suggesting that museums are crucial ‘political infrastructure’.
Recent ‘crisis narratives’ imply that a collective sense of belonging and trust within democratic societies is at risk from the rhetoric and ambitions of diverse political movements and from the impacts of global change. From populist and far-right actors; from the actions of grass-roots protest movements; from global shifts through climate change, war and conflict, and the resulting movements of people between places. Political and social ‘culture wars’ focus on and reinforce polarised ideologies, breaking down trust in democratic institutions and social structures, instrumentalising uncertainties to provoke crises. Museums are instrumentalised by some as a stabilising force within such socio-political crises, while others mobilise them to destabilise, each according to their political aims. In many countries museums themselves increasingly position their work within this political space, seeking to ‘take a stand’ against anti-democratic developments, or to pursue ‘museum activism’ to further social justice ambitions.
Can museums navigate their increasing political instrumentalization and activist appropriation - both beyond and within the institutions themselves - without risking the loss of public trust? What happens to the mandate of democratic public education through heritage and memory, if such political, social and cultural infrastructures are governed by populist, or even far-right, parties? How might this differ in countries with different traditions and expectations around the independence, neutrality, or instrumentalization of museums, or where crises have led to the neglect of museums as part of democratic political infrastructure, instead of their mobilisation?
Susannah Eckersley is Professor of Critical Heritage and Memory Cultures at the department of Media, Culture, Heritage at Newcastle University, UK, and visiting research fellow at the Leibniz Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam. Her research focus is interdisciplinary, with specialist expertise in identities, contested belonging and populism; memory and difficult histories; migration, diversity and representation. Susannah Eckersley addresses the ways these issues are represented, reflected or neglected in the work of museums and heritage, in commemorations and protests, and in the politics of heritage and memory.
She currently leads the AHRC-DFG funded collaborative research project ‘Cultural Dynamics: Museums and Democracy in Motion’ (2023-2026, with Prof Guido Fackler, JMU Würzburg) https://research.ncl.ac.uk/culturaldynamics/. Previously she has led and participated in several large international, collaborative research projects funded by HERA (en/counter/points project https://research.ncl.ac.uk/encounterpoints/), Horizon 2020 (CoHERE project https://research.ncl.ac.uk/cohere/), and European Commission FP7 (MeLA project https://www.mela-project.polimi.it/). She is the co-editor of the Routledge book series ‘Critical Heritages of Europe’, is a member of the advisory board of Museum Friedland, Niedersachsen, and has published widely on museums, heritage, culture and belonging.
Recent publications include:
- Zito, A. and Eckersley, S. (2025) ‘Framing European Heritage and Identity: Cultural Policy Instruments of the European Union’ Journal of Common Market Studies, in production (accepted April 2025)
- Eckersley S. (2022) ‘Museums as a public space of belonging? Negotiating dialectics of purpose, presentation and participation’. In: Eckersley S; Vos C, ed. Diversity of Belonging in Europe: Public Spaces, Contested Places, Cultural Encounters. Abingdon: Routledge, 2023, pp.17-40
- Eckersley S, Vos C, (editors) (2022) Diversity of Belonging in Europe: Public Spaces, Contested Places, Cultural Encounters. Routledge: London
- Eckersley S, Mears H. (2022) Toolkit on Belonging for museum professionals. Online publication of interactive toolkit, open access: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/encounterpoints/museumsandbelongingtoolkit/
- Eckersley, S. (2020) ‘Encountering Authenticity in the Contact Zone? Museums, Refugees and Participation’, in Kimmel, D. and Brüggerhoff, S. (eds), Museen - Orte des Authentischen? Museums - Places of Authenticity? RGZM Tagungen Vol. 42: Mainz
- Eckersley, S. (2019) ‘A Place at the Table? Food in museums as an 'Ersatz politics' of difficulty’. In: Porciani, I. (ed.) Food Heritage and Nationalism in Europe. Routledge: London
- Eckersley, S. (2019) ‘Between appropriation and appropriateness: instrumentalising dark heritage in populism and memory?’ in Kaya, A and de Cesari, C. (eds) European Memory in Populism: Representations of Self and Other, Routledge: London
- Whitehead, C., Eckersley, S., Daugbjerg, M. Bozoglu, G. (eds.) (2019) Dimensions of European Heritage and Memory, Routledge: London
- Eckersley S. (2017) 'People-Place-Process' and Attachment in the Museum: A new Paradigm for Understanding Belonging?’ Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 2017, 26(2), 6-30
