Dr Megan Wang (née Kelleher)

Welcome to 2025! Firstly, I hope you had a restful festive period and whatever you decided to do was joyful. As we head into 2025, I wanted to take a moment to pause and reflect on my research goals for the year. Hopefully this encourages you to consider what you’d like to research this year, and perhaps there are mutual crossovers!

Goal 1: Work on the Thesis

I will be the first to admit that I have somewhat neglected turning my thesis into a monograph or book. When I submitted the final copy, I knew I needed some time to decompress from the research and, whilst I have been utilising the research for some wider projects, I want to dedicate some time to turning the thesis into a monograph or book. This is very much at its early stages, but I hope to have a sample chapter that I can share with potential publishers by the end of the year.

Goal 2: Second World War Commemoration

This has been a project I’ve been wanting to work on throughout 2024, and whilst I started researching it towards the end of the year I want to dedicate some time to this too. Specifically, I want to consider how sites of memory within the United Kingdom differed between the two World Wars, and the learnings that the Imperial War Graves Commission had from its First World War work which it implemented with its Second World War cemeteries within the UK.

Goal 3: Films Representing War Cemeteries

Again, I considered this project in 2024 but I want to explore this idea further. One thing I’ve noticed, from my own watching of war films, is that the cemeteries themselves are often not shown. When I posted about this on social media, a lot of the responses I received referenced US-made films about US history and themes, so I want to see why this isn’t something that comes up more frequently in the British context. Indeed, we often see the individual experience death, but the rites and rituals associated with war commemoration are often omitted from the narrative or focus solely on war memorials.

These are my main goals for 2025, but who knows – I may end up finding another research rabbit hole to go down! What are your plans for 2025, and did you make any progress on your 2024 research goals last year? I’d love to know!