Received from Dr. Simon John (Swansea University) Contested Histories: Creating and Critiquing Public Monuments and Memorials in a New Age of Iconoclasm is a workshop which will be hosted by the Swansea University Conflict, Reconstruction and Memory (CRAM) Research Group on 28th and 29th June 2021, online via Zoom Overview This event, organised by Swansea University’s Conflict, Reconstruction and Memory Research Group, will explore debates surrounding the cultural and political uses of monuments, reflecting upon their role in the memorialisation and imagining of the past. It takes a broad view of ‘monuments’, considering artefacts such as war memorials, cenotaphs and public statuary as well as urban sites damaged through war, or locations hallowed through their connection to pivotal events in the past. Initially planned for summer 2020 but postponed due to COVID-19, the workshop draws inspiration from contemporary debates energised by movements such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’, Decolonizing the University, and campaigns against Confederate monuments in the USA. This event aims to contribute to these dialogues by fostering academic critiques of past uses of monuments and statues, whilst simultaneously engaging with present-day issues. Attendees will hear from academic speakers as well as practitioners who are (or have been) involved in […]

by Dr. David Chan Smith (Wilfrid Laurier University) There is in an old British entrepreneurial tradition for those keen to escape regulation: find an ancient liberty, preferably an island (or an abandoned Maunsell Fort in the North Sea), and declare it free. Richard Score seized the opportunity in 1716 when he leased the island of Lundy and claimed that it was beyond British taxes and duties ‘like the Isles of Man, Guernsey etc’. Stretching just three miles long in the Bristol Channel, Lundy was ideally poised to serve the bustling smuggling economy on the coasts of southern Wales and southwest England. Score knew this business well because he had been a Customs officer in Penzance. He had succumbed, as contemporaries often said, to the ‘temptation’ of smuggling. During this period of high duties fortunes were made on islands such as Jersey and Guernsey that served as entrepots in the running trade. And now Score had his very own – at least for a time. His story is part of the long history of tax havens and hidden economies, spaces and structures that continue to shape the global economy. Through the lens of early modern smuggling, my research explores the offshore […]