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Institute of Archaeology

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Luisa Nienhaus

Nationalism and Internationalism at Napoleonic Heritage Sites: Conflict Heritage, Dark Tourism, and European Identities

 

Email: Luisa.nienhaus.13@ucl.ac.uk
Section: Heritage Studies

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Nationalism and Internationalism at Napoleonic Heritage Sites: Conflict Heritage, Dark Tourism, and European Identities

Two hundred years on, the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and their legacy remain a contested topic. In the past ten years, the bicentenaries of the Napoleonic Wars and the death of Napoleon himself have received international attention. This project aims to assess how visitors to sites associated with the Napoleonic Wars perceive Napoleonic heritage in relation to national and European identities.

Drawing on visitor surveys conducted at the Victory Gallery of the National Museum of the Royal Navy in England, Forum 1813 and Monument to the Battle of Nations in Germany, Memorial 1815 in Belgium and the Modern Department of the Army Museum in France, the collected data has been analysed using descriptive statistics, non-parametric hypothesis testing and cluster and principal component analysis.

The results suggest that visitors are strongly influenced by, sentiments and history ascribed to their national identity (referred to as the nationality factor in this study), documented by significant differences between the analysed nationalities. This was observed irrespectively of whether visitors were encountered at sites in their home country or abroad (abroad factor). Additionally, distinct features of a site and their interpretation have the power to enhance or moderate the national perceptions through the tools and language used (site factor). When it comes to the question of how visitors perceive sites associated with the Napoleonic Wars in relation to their national and European identities, the nationality factor overlays the influencing aspects of the abroad factor. In contrast, the impact of the nationality factor and the site factor were at times commingling, therefore, not always presenting a clear-cut distinction between the two factors or the dominance of one over the other.

Education

    • MA (hons), Celtic Civilisation and History, University of Aberdeen 2013
    • MA, Public Archaeology, UCL, 2014
    Publications

    Hale, R., Pettigrew, A., Karayianni, E., Pearce, A., Foster S., Needham, K., Nienhaus, L. and Chapman, A. 2023. Continuity and Change: Ten years of teaching and learning about the Holocaust in England’s Secondary Schools. London: UCL.

    Conferences

    Conference organisation

    Member of the Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference organising committee for the 41st Annual Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference (TAG), University College London, United Kingdom. (16 – 18 December 2019).

    Session organisation

    Nienhaus, L. and Moshenska, G. 2022. Heritage-making in and after conflict. Session organised at the 43rd Annual Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference (TAG), University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. (15 – 17 December).

    Nienhaus, L. and Zhang, L. 2019. Pathways to post-conflict remembrance. Session organised at the 41st Annual Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference (TAG), University College London, United Kingdom. (16 – 18 December).

    Oldham, M. and Nienhaus, L. 2019. 15 years after Merriman – Public Archaeology: looking back and thinking about the future. Session organised at the 25th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), University of Bern, Switzerland. (4 – 7 September).

    Presentations

    Nienhaus, L. 2022. Post-Conflict commemoration and Heritage: The Napoleonic Wars and Contemporary Society. Paper presented at the 43rd Annual Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference (TAG), University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. (15 – 17 December).

    Nienhaus, L. and Karayianni, E. 2021. Continuity and Change: Teaching about the Holocaust in 2009 and 2019/20. Paper presented at the Annual British Education Research Association (BERA) Conference, London, United Kingdom. (13 – 16 September). (online).

    Nienhaus, L. 2019. 200 years after Napoleon Bonaparte: Rätsel, Énigmes, and Conundrums of an International Study on the Commemorations of the Napoleonic Wars. Paper presented at the 25th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), University of Bern, Switzerland. (4 - 7 September).

    Nienhaus, L. Memorials, Identity and Tourism. Paper presented at the Remember Me: The Changing Face of Memorialisation Conference, University of Hull, United Kingdom. (5 – 7 April).

    Nienhaus, L. 2017. Visiting Battlefields: The Public and Contemporary Commemorations of the Napoleonic Wars. Paper presented at the 10th Annual Modern Conflict Archaeology Conference (MCA), University of Bristol, United Kingdom. (20 October).

    Nienhaus, L. 2017. Contemporary Commemorations of the Napoleonic Wars. Paper presented at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), University of Maastricht, The Netherlands. (30 August – 3 September).

    Nienhaus, L. 2016. Battlefield Landscapes and the Public. Poster presented at the 9th Biennial Fields of Conflict, Trinity College Dublin, Republic of Ireland. (22 – 25 September).