Bhanu Ghalot

Bhanu Ghalot

Email: bhanushali.gahlot@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

Thesis Title

Dissonant Histories in South Asia’s Museums: Memory, Religion and Politics in the ‘1947 Partition Memorialisation Project’ in India

Institution

The University of Manchester

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. The objective of the research is to understand, critically engage with and outline the ‘heritage-making process’ of the PMP. 

.

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.

Student profiles

See all profiles