Overview
I am currently a 3rd-year PhD student researching memorialisation in Japanese museums. I became interested in this area while writing my undergraduate dissertation entitled: ‘Hiroshima’s forgotten voices: hibakusha video testimony and memorialisation’.
I hold a BA in Spanish and Japanese from Cardiff University (2015-2019). During my time as an undergraduate I spent 5 months on Toyo University’s (Tokyo) exchange programme and 5 months in Argentina teaching English.
I am a member of the British Association for Japanese Studies (BAJS) and the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS). I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2022).
I am a Postgraduate co-Deputy Lead for the History and Heritage research theme within the School of Modern Languages (2021-22 & 2022-2023).
Research
Research interests
My main research interest is history and how historical events are memorialised in museums. In my PhD research, I am exploring how historical events are memorialised in Japanese museums, with particular focus on the various modes of displaying eyewitness testimony.
In 2022, I was awarded a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Summer Fellowship, which allowed me to undertake a two-month fieldwork trip in Japan during which I visited around 40 museums. I wrote a blog about my fieldwork in Japan for Cardiff University's Doctoral Academy, available here: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/doctoral-academy-blog/phd-fieldwork-in-japan-two-lessons-i-learnt/
Papers and Presentations
Constance, L. 2022. Eyewitness Testimony in Japanese Memorial Museums (presentation). Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Studentship Day 2022. London: SOAS. 11 November 2022.
Constance, L. 2022. Digitalisation and Visualisation of Eyewitness Accounts in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (paper). British Association for Japanese Studies Conference 2022. Manchester: University of Manchester. 8 September 2022.
Constance, L. 2022. Digitalisation and Visualisation of Eyewitness Accounts in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (paper). Hiroshima-Nagasaki-Fukushima: Articulations of the nuclear. Cologne: University of Cologne. 19 May 2022.
Constance, L. 2022. Eyewitness Testimony in Japanese Memorial Museums (presentation). British Association for Japanese Studies/Japan Foundation Postgraduate Workshop 2022. Norwich; University of East Anglia. 25 February 2022.
Constance, L. 2021. Eyewitness Testimony in Japanese Memorial Museums (paper). Ypres and Hiroshima: Eye-Witness Testimony, Transnational Memory and Memorialisation Practices. Cardiff; Global Language-based Area Studies Research Theme, Cardiff University School of Modern Languages. Online, 15 December 2021. Available here.
Constance, L. 2021. Digitalisation of eyewitness testimony in Japanese memorial museums (presentation). European Association for Japanese Studies 17th PhD Workshop 2021. Leuven; KU Leuven. Online, 20 August 2021.
Constance, L. 2021. Digitalisation of eyewitness testimony in Japanese memorial museums (presentation). Cardiff University School of Modern Languages PGR Conference 2021. Cardiff; Cardiff University School of Modern Languages. Online, 30 June 2021. Available here.
Constance, L. 2021. Digitalisation of eyewitness testimony in Japanese memorial museums (paper). Cardiff University Breaking Boundaries Conference 2021. Cardiff; Cardiff University. Online, 13 May 2021.
Constance, L. 2021. Eyewitness testimony in the Japanese museum (presentation). British Association for Japanese Studies/Japan Foundation Postgraduate Workshop 2021. Online, 25 February 2021.
Blog Posts
Constance, L. 2023. PhD fieldwork in Japan: Two lessons I learnt. Cardiff University Doctoral Academy Blog. Available online at: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/doctoral-academy-blog/phd-fieldwork-in-japan-two-lessons-i-learnt/
Teaching
I am currently teaching the Japanese seminars for the 2022-2023 module ML8100 - Introduction to Translation Methods.
I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2022).
Thesis
The Presentation of Eyewitness Testimony in Japanese Memorial Museums
The purpose of this research project is to understand how eyewitness testimony is exhibited in Japanese memorial museums, and the factors that shape what testimony is presented, and the form in which it is presented. Direct eyewitnesses to historical events play an important part in memorialisation and education at memorial museums in Europe and North America, as seen in research on Holocaust museums (Hartman 1995; de Jong 2018). However, there comes a time when direct eyewitnesses can no longer share their stories, and numbers of eyewitnesses to certain historical events in the past (such as those who witnessed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima) are dwindling. Therefore, different modes of display have been introduced to continue to provide visitors with the opportunity to hear eyewitness testimony. The use of ‘legacy successor programmes’ (where volunteers are trained for three years to ‘inherit’ an eyewitness’ story in order to communicate it to audiences once the eyewitness can no longer do so themselves, such as the initiative run by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, amongst others), are not widely used in European memorial museums, and raise questions on the ethicality of practices of displaying eyewitness testimony once they are no longer around. Furthermore, research on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and museums memorialising the 3/11 Fukushima triple disaster have suggested that more could be done to highlight eyewitnesses’ experiences in displays (Chen 2012; Maly and Yamazaki 2021). Therefore, this research aims to analyse practices at Japanese memorial museums to establish to what degree the role of individuals and groups are influential in the display of eyewitnesses’ personal stories in museum exhibits, so they are both accessible to museum visitors while remaining ethical with respect to the eyewitnesses themselves. Key words: ethics, testimony, memorial, museum, hibakusha, eyewitness
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Funding source
The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation
