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Lauren Constance   AFHEA

Miss Lauren Constance

(she/her)

AFHEA

Research student

School of Modern Languages

Overview

I am currently a 3rd-year PhD student researching memorialisation in Japanese museums. I became interested in this area while writing my undergraduate dissertation entitled: 'Hiroshima's forgotten voices: hibakusha video testimony and memorialisation'. 

I hold a BA in Spanish and Japanese from Cardiff University (2015-2019).  During my time as an undergraduate I spent 5 months on Toyo University's (Tokyo) exchange programme and 5 months in Argentina teaching English.

I am a member of the British Association for Japanese Studies (BAJS), the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS) and Japan Anthropology Workshop (JAWS). I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2022) and taught for two years (2021-22 & 2022-23) on the module ML8100 - Introduction to Translation Methods, leading the Japanese language-specific seminars.

I was a Postgraduate co-Deputy Lead for the History and Heritage research theme within the School of Modern Languages (2021-22 & 2022-2023). 

Research

My main research interest is history and how historical events are memorialised in museums. In my PhD research, I am exploring how historical events are memorialised in Japanese museums, with particular focus on the various modes of displaying eyewitness testimony.

In 2022, I was awarded a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Summer Fellowship, which allowed me to undertake a two-month fieldwork trip in Japan during which I visited around 40 museums. I wrote a blog about my fieldwork in Japan for Cardiff University's Doctoral Academy, available here: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/doctoral-academy-blog/phd-fieldwork-in-japan-two-lessons-i-learnt/ 

Thesis

The Presentation of Eyewitness Testimony in Japanese Memorial Museums

Direct eyewitnesses to historical events play an important part in memorialisation and education at memorial museums in Europe and North America, as seen in research on Holocaust museums (Hartman 1995; de Jong 2018). However, there comes a time when direct eyewitnesses can no longer share their stories, and numbers of eyewitnesses to certain historical events in the past (such as those who witnessed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima) are dwindling. Therefore, different modes of display have been introduced to memorial museum exhibits continue to provide visitors with the opportunity to hear eyewitness testimony. Therefore, the purpose of this research project is to understand how eyewitness testimony is exhibited in Japanese memorial museums, and the factors that shape what testimony is presented.

The academic works written on Japanese memory often analyse Japanese memorialisation through the lens of ‘European’-derived theories and approaches, such as Hawlbach’s (1925) theory of ‘Collective Memory’, Nora’s (1984) ‘lieux de memoire’, and Assmann’s (2010) ‘Cultural Memory’. Brownlie (2022) notes that concepts of translation can have an impact on Memory Studies. Firstly, there is a difficulty of translating central terms and concepts into the target language, and secondly, that these concepts can sometimes be politically instrumentalised once removed from their original contexts. These factors can all impede analysis of ‘Japanese’ memory studies from an English-language perspective. Brownlie (2022) also recognises that there is a ‘global dominance of English’ in memory studies, which she puts down to the difficulty to get published or recognition if an academic’s work is not written in English. It is also argued that there is a ‘western hegemony’ of Memory Studies, because the major concepts and theories on memory were developed in Europe, particularly France and Germany, and the United States (Saaler and Schwentker 2008). 

This research will help memory studies scholars to better understand museums and memorialisation outside of Europe and North America, through contributing to more global debates about the ethics of eyewitness testimony. Additionally, for Japanese Studies, through looking at how digitalisation and eyewitness testimony can be used in a wider range of Japanese museums, this research contributes a different perspective to the literature on more familiar museums such as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums. It will also help museums which may be unfamiliar with Japan and its museological practices, to understand how digitalisation and eyewitness testimony is handled in museums in a different geographic area. This research will also contribute to existing literature on the ethicality of digitalisation of eyewitness accounts through an analysis of displays of eyewitness testimony at Japanese museums and Japanese museum ethics.

 

Funding sources

Part-funded by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation

Teaching

I led the Japanese seminars for the module ML8100 - Introduction to Translation Methods in the academic years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023.

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2022).

Biography

Professional memberships

  • British Association for Japanese Studies (BAJS)
  • European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS)
  • Japan Anthropology Workshop (JAWS)

Speaking engagements

Papers and Presentations

Constance, L. 2023. Hibakusha legacies: an analysis of the ‘legacy successor programme’ in Hiroshima. 17th International Conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies. Ghent: Ghent University. 20 August 2023.

Constance, L. 2023. Hibakusha legacies: an analysis of the ‘legacy successor programme’ at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Museums in and of Japan: Translation and Memorialisation. Cardiff: Cardiff University School of Modern Languages. 19 April 2023.

Constance, L. 2023. Fieldwork in Japan (presentation). British Association for Japanese Studies/Japan Foundation Postgraduate Workshop 2023.  London: SOAS. Online, 18 March 2023. 

Constance, L. 2022. Eyewitness Testimony in Japanese Memorial Museums (presentation). Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Studentship Day 2022. London: SOAS. 11 November 2022. 

Constance, L. 2022. Digitalisation and Visualisation of Eyewitness Accounts in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (paper). British Association for Japanese Studies Conference 2022. Manchester: University of Manchester. 8 September 2022.

Constance, L. 2022. Digitalisation and Visualisation of Eyewitness Accounts in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (paper). Hiroshima-Nagasaki-Fukushima: Articulations of the nuclear. Cologne: University of Cologne. 19 May 2022.

Constance, L. 2022. Eyewitness Testimony in Japanese Memorial Museums (presentation). British Association for Japanese Studies/Japan Foundation Postgraduate Workshop 2022. Norwich; University of East Anglia. 25 February 2022.  

Constance, L. 2021. Eyewitness Testimony in Japanese Memorial Museums (paper). Ypres and Hiroshima: Eye-Witness Testimony, Transnational Memory and Memorialisation Practices. Cardiff; Global Language-based Area Studies Research Theme, Cardiff University School of Modern Languages. Online, 15 December 2021. Available here.

Constance, L. 2021. Digitalisation of eyewitness testimony in Japanese memorial museums (presentation). European Association for Japanese Studies 17th PhD Workshop 2021. Leuven; KU Leuven. Online, 20 August 2021. 

Constance, L. 2021. Digitalisation of eyewitness testimony in Japanese memorial museums (presentation). Cardiff University School of Modern Languages PGR Conference 2021. Cardiff; Cardiff University School of Modern Languages. Online, 30 June 2021. Available here.

Constance, L. 2021. Digitalisation of eyewitness testimony in Japanese memorial museums (paper). Cardiff University Breaking Boundaries Conference 2021. Cardiff; Cardiff University. Online, 13 May 2021.

Constance, L. 2021. Eyewitness testimony in the Japanese museum (presentation). British Association for Japanese Studies/Japan Foundation Postgraduate Workshop 2021. Online, 25 February 2021.  

Supervisors

Ruselle Meade

Ruselle Meade

Lecturer in Japanese Studies

Hanna Diamond

Hanna Diamond

Professor of French History

Research themes

Specialisms

  • Japanese studies
  • Heritage, archive and museum studies

External profiles