Museums for Peace

Museums for Peace: In Search of History, Memory and Change highlights the inspiring as well as conflicting representations and purposes of diverse museums for peace around the world.

Coming from various cultural and professional backgrounds, the authors explore “what are museums for peace and what do they mean?” Some chapters introduce alternative histories of peace, conflict, and memorialization. This innovative collection examines grassroots museums, military sexual slavery, historical memory in East Asia, and cultural heritage in the Africanized peace museum movement. The chapters discuss differing representations of Gandhi, technology of war and opposition to it, and structural violence such as racial terror and imperialism. Investigating how institutions interact with political and cultural forces, the volume demonstrates that some museums reinforce hegemonic narratives, while others resist authoritative tropes to reveal silenced histories, including peace histories.

Museums for Peace will appeal to academics and students in museum studies, heritage studies, peace studies, memory studies, social justice, and human rights. Those working in cultural studies and trauma studies will also find this volume valuable.

The Open Access version of this book, available at , has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

... Museums For Peace: In Search of History, Memory, and Change is a foundational new text: immediately essential for any serious review of contemporary peacebuilding. Its analysis challenges readers to rethink our strategic approaches to using history and memory to foster effective social change... Museums for Peace is required reading for more than museum studies or peace studies professionals. It rings a bell of hope for all those seeking nonviolent futures ahead.

—MATT MEYER,
Secretary-General, International Peace Research Association;
Senior Research Scholar, University of Massachusetts/Amherst (USA)

This publication is crucial in our time. It brings together different voices touching on our deepest quest and struggles for PEACE, over decades, across geopolitical boundaries, capturing global complexities of history, memory, and social transformation. This respice–prospice reminds us of who we are! Are we ready to join hands and hearts to embrace a living Museums for Peace Movement that realizes universal values, humanness, and ubuntu?

— MARION KEIM,
UNESCO Chair, Sport, Development, Peace and Olympic Education;
Professor, University of the Western Cape (South Africa)

Museums for Peace: In Search of History, Memory, and Change is a critical, profound, and important study of the links between the mission of peacebuilding and the challenges facing us today in the worlds of museums, heritage-making, history-telling, and memory-keeping.

– IRATXE MOMOITIO ASTORKIA
Director, Guernika Peace Museum (Spain);
Coordinator, International Network of Museums for Peace

This volume marks an important contribution to the growing scholarship on museums for peace. With authors and examples from across the globe, it promises to deepen our understanding of the potential of museums to advocate for and promote peace, while also acknowledging their limitations.

– AMY SODARO
Author, Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and
the Politics of Past Violence

Museums for Peace: In Search of History, Memory, and Change is an important addition to the literature on a subject that is still relatively little explored. The editors and contributing authors present and analyse a wide variety of museums in Africa, Asia, and the USA in what are highly interesting and original essays opening up new perspectives. Together with introductory chapters and concluding reflections, the volume is destined to become a key reference work in the field.

— PETER VAN DEN DUNGEN,
Founding General Coordinator, International
Network of Museums for Peace

Joyce Apsel is Clinical Professor in Liberal Studies at New York University (USA) and President, the Institute for Study of Genocide. She is author of Introducing Peace Museums (2016), and co-editor of Museums and Sites of Persuasion (2020); Genocide Matters (2014) and Museums for Peace: Transforming Cultures (2012).

Clive Barrett is Chair of Trustees of The Peace Museum, Bradford (UK) with 30 years of engagement with peace museums. His publications include Subversive Peacemakers (2014), and contributions to A Cultural History of Peace in the Age of Empire (2020) and the Blackwell Companion to Religion and Peace (2022).

Roy Tamashiro is Professor Emeritus in Multidisciplinary Studies at Webster University (USA). His recent publications include contributed chapters to Building Positive Peace (2023); Oral History and Qualitative Methodologies (2022); Peace Journeys (2019); Museums and Sites of Persuasion (2019); and Pilgrimage as Transformative Process (2018).

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