Concrete Cairns: Bunker Museums and Cold War Memory on Britain’s Peripheries

Abstract

This paper will examine two Cold War bunkers in Scotland that have been converted into museums. Both buildings’ ‘cold’ lives and afterlives are integral to the curated stories within and the museums’ multiple meanings contested by communities previously kept out by barbed wire fences.

Presenter Biography

Dr Jim Gledhill is Research Fellow at National Museums Scotland and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Stirling working on the AHRC-funded project Materialising the Cold War. He was previously curator of social history at the Museum of London and York Castle Museum and most recently curator of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Museum at Edinburgh Castle. He specialises in contemporary British social and military history, international politics and heritage studies.