Peter Berger & Christoph Conrad, The past as history: National identity and historical consciousness in modern Europe (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan 2015). 570 s.

Life stories and experiences are shaped within a broad range of uses of heavily institutionalized identity politics, mediated narratives and situational bodily experiences. Acting upon individual desires is a necessity for formation of collective identities and identification, communicatively constructing society. Examples from a variety of contexts will be used to argue that meaning is created through exchange between spheres of different logics: existential, political, market and institutional logics might openly oppose and contradict each other and crave for autonomy. When successful in establishing a powerful historical culture they do nevertheless more often reinforce each other when life experiences and new utopias are being shaped through narrating and negotiating memories to deal with contemporary challenges.

Introduction 1. Towards a Typology: the changing roles of Art Museums 2. Cultural History Museums and the making of Citizens and Communities 3. National Museums in between Regionalism, Nationalism and Imperialism, 1750 - 1914 4. Post-imperial Nations: new states, new borders and new unions 1914-2010 5. Conflicted Histories: museums, nations, empires, religions 6. National Museums and National Symbols: searching for the 'symbolic regimes' of Europe Conclusion: The National Museum as a Cultural Constitution

Europe's national museums have been at the centre of on-going nation-making processes, since their creation.These museums have successfully negotiated conflicts and contradictions to obtain the support of citizens and taxpayers, domestic and foreign visitors, scientists, art connoisseurs, and policy makers.National Museums and Nation-building in Europe 1750-2010 assess the national museum as a manifestation of cultural and political desires, rather than a straightforward representation of the historical facts of a nation.Examining the degree to which national museums have created models and representations of nations, their past, present and future, this book proceeds to assess the consequences of such attempts.Revealing how different types of nations and statesformer empires, monarchies, republics, pre-modern, modern or post-imperial entitiesdeploy and prioritise different types of museums in their making, it constitutes the first comprehensive and comparative perspective on national museums in Europe and their intricate relationship to the making of

National Museums is a major thematic collection of new research papers from around the world. The book is an interrogation of the origins, purpose, organisation, politics, narratives, philosophies ...

There is general increase on demand for research to be useful. This is more pronounced in the European funding than in traditional academic research. This paper problematizes and discusses the ways critical research can respond to these demands. The tendency is towards both specific calls driven by policy goals, and more diverse demands to formulate and communicate relevant knowledge to various stakeholders. There is a tension between unfettered critical research and the urgent contemporary quest for instrumental knowledge that needs to be respected, but also bridged. The positive dimension of EU:s call for research to be useful is accepting the need to share arguments, to stimulate dialogue, but the goal is not to produce consent but rather to trigger further investigation and disclosure of hitherto unknown or unobserved realms of culture.

Introduction : Performing Nordic Heritage: Institutional Preservation and Popular Practices

Research on uses of the past and cultural heritage has expanded during the last two decades. Themes are now running in several directions both within disciplines and as a tool to unite small departments and to answer large societal challenges. The Framework programmes in EU poses new formats for funding, where policy relevance needs to be developed. Though this presents challenges to disciplinary autonomy it also invites a much needed occasion for cultural research to interact in new ways with stakeholders.