VE Day 80: How we remember the Second World War (HAP Summer Seminar)

This event will be held on Zoom. Instructions for joining the event will be sent to participants via email the day before the event. Please ensure that you enter the correct email and check your spam if you do not receive the email containing the joining link.

About the event:
To mark the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day, join us for the first History and Archives in Practice 2025 Summer Seminar to discuss three different practices commemorating the Second World War.

• Dr Megan Kelleher (Historian and Academic Access Manager at the RAF Museum) discusses the creation of the six RAF regional cemeteries in the UK during the Second World War commemorating British Empire Forces stationed in the UK, and analyses the changing approach to burial and commemoration by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) between the First and Second World Wars.
• Alexia Clark (Commemorations Caseworker, Joint Casualty & Compassionate Centre, (Commemorations Caseworker, Joint Casualty & Compassionate Centre, Ministry of Defence) considers the unique role of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) War Detectives in remembrance - a team tasked with the identification of missing service personnel from the two world wars and the Korean War, culminating in modern military funerals for those identified.
• Eric Blakeley (author, tv documentary-maker, media lecturer and publications editor of the Channel Islands Occupation Society) reflects upon the different ways the Channel Islands remember and commemorate the end of the Second World War, using the case study of the project ‘Liberation 1945 - As it Happened’ - an online recreation of the Channel Islands' Liberation in real time via social media.

Megan, Alexia, and Eric join Will Butler, Head of Modern Collections at The National Archives, to reflect on their work and the practices of commemoration.

Please email [email protected] if you have any accessibility requirements. This is the first event in the 2025 'History and Archives in Practice' summer series, co-hosted by The National Archives, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Royal Historical Society.

Other seminars in the series are:

• 1pm, Tuesday 10 June: 'Family photography archives'
• 1pm, Thursday 24 July: 'Crowdsourcing the past: Memory Projects in South Asia'