Student profiles
Bhanu Ghalot
Email: bhanushali.gahlot@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Thesis Title
Institution
Supervisors
Dr Emma Martin, Senior Lecturer in Museology Director, Institute for Cultural Practices, The University of Manchester
Prof Deana Heath, Chair in Indian and Colonial History, School of Histories, Languages and Cultures and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Liverpool
Research Summary
This research builds a critical discourse on how the Partition of India into two separate nation-states in 1947, and the horrific violence and displacement that accompanied this, is being imagined in memorial museum spaces through the ‘Partition Memorialisation Project’ (PMP) in India. It juxtaposes the PMP with the rise in right-wing politics in India and raises the question of ‘How are we curating a history of ethnic violence in a country governed by sectarian politics?’
The research focuses on three PMP projects the Partition Museum in Amritsar and Delhi, The 1947 Partition Archive and the Museum of Material Memory. A part of the methodological approach of the research includes visitor research at the Partition Museum, interviews with curators and scholars of Partition and focus groups with survivors/families to understand how the larger PMP community works with and responds to the curation and commemoration of this history. The theoretical framing of the research is rooted in the global academic discourse on dissonant heritage and Memorial Museums.
Research Interests
Memorial Museums, Dissonant Heritage, Curating difficult knowledge, Oral history and Memories, Subaltern studies, 1947 Partition history, Postcolonial Museums, cultural policies, cultural appropriation, material culture, ethical curation and cultural exchange in a digital world.
Publications
Presented a paper titled ‘Curating Difficult Histories: Exploring the 1947 Partition Memorialisation Project’, at Exhibit Asia Conference organised by Centre For Global South, University of London (1st Sep 2023).
Presented a guest lecture at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (29th Oct 2021). The lecture was titled ‘Museumising Partition.’
Co-authored a paper for the Routledge Handbook for Museums. It highlights pedagogical engagements with traumatic histories in Indian museums.