Photo of Dr Tamara West

Dr Tamara West

Senior Research Fellow Languages, Cultures and Film

About

Personal Statement

My research activities are in cultural heritage and place, cultural policy, and digital cultural heritage and participation. I also have research interests, publications and expertise in the field of Memory Studies, particularly the uses of photography and storytelling as memory practices.

I am Project Lead on the Cultural Heritage, People and Place Project. This is funded by the AHRC-DCMS 'Research culture and heritage capital with an interdisciplinary team' call and is a collaboration between the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and project research partner National Museums Liverpool. Sitting within the wider portfolio of projects funded under the Culture and Heritage Capital thematic focus of the call, it uses mixed methods to co-develop a robust and holistic approach for capturing and articulating the value(s) of culture and heritage, focusing on National Museums Liverpool’s Waterfront Transformation Project as a case study.

I am Co-Investigator on the AHRC-DFG funded project Romani Migration between Germany and Britain (1880s-1914): Spaces of Informal Business, Media Spectacle, and Racial Policing. This project is a collaboration between the University of Bielefeld, Germany and the University of Liverpool, and with research partners the German Historical Institute in London and the Niedersächsischer Verband Deutscher Sinti e.V. (Lower Saxony Association of German Sinti). Within this project, I concentrate on the co-creation of a GIS mapping of a historical migration, based on a print and visual media analysis and workshops with community and cultural partners.

I am Project Lead on the ESRC funded networking grant Transnational Memory Practices in the UK and South Korea: Ethics, Evaluation and Learning in Digital Exhibitions. The project brought together academic researchers and arts and cultural sector practitioners from South Korea and the UK to explore ways in which digital exhibitions and associated materials might address complex memory practices.

I joined the University initially as Research Fellow in the Institute of Cultural Capital where I investigated shifts in cultural policy, governance and practice in the decade since Liverpool hosted the European Capital of Culture (ECoC). This included a critical exploration of the effect of the ECoC hosting legacy on the delisting of the city's World Heritage Site. Before this I worked at the University of Birmingham in research and teaching roles across the Birmingham Business School, the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage, and the Digital Humanities Hub. During this time I worked on collaborative AHRC and EU projects exploring digital cultural heritage, regional development and cross-sector collaboration, and I taught postgraduate modules in International Heritage Management and Tourism at World Heritage Sites.

My PhD was in Cultural Geography and investigated memory, photography and identity in and beyond post Second World War displaced persons camps in Germany, focusing on the children who had grown up in them and how their memories of displacement are shared and negotiated through images, stories, and cultural practices. My BA (Hons) degree was in History of Film, Photography and Graphic Media.