Megan O'Mahony

Megan O'Mahony

PhD candidate

Department of International Relations

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Languages
English
Key Expertise
sexual violence, museums, gender, memory, material culture

About me

Megan (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her project is a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) with Imperial War Museums (IWM) and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Megan holds a first-class BA in History from the University of Exeter and a distinction-grade MA in Museum Studies from University College London. Before coming to LSE, Megan worked in the Learning Department of London's Science Museum, and at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. Megan recently completed CDP placements at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience and at the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide. 

Research topic

Representing and Remembering Conflict-related Sexual Violence in the Second World War at Museums and Memorials

Megan’s research explores how museums and memorials—as societally, nationally and internationally embedded spaces—represent (and do not represent) the diverse experiences of sexual violence in the Second World War. By examining the agential capacity of these spaces in performing memory, curating knowledge and making (in)visible certain aspects of conflict-related sexual violence, Megan hopes to yield meaningful insights into the place of gender violence in collective conflict memory, and to introduce a critical analysis of a gendered cosmopolitan memory. More broadly, Megan is interested in the role of museums and memorialisation in transitional justice processes. 

Teaching experience

  • IR101: Contemporary Issues in International Relations (LSE)

Academic supervisors

Katharine M Millar

Paul Kirby

Tarak Barkawi

Lauren Willmott (Imperial War Museums)

Research Cluster affiliation

Security and Statecraft Research Cluster

Theory/Area/History Research Cluster

 

 

Expertise Details

Sexual violence; museums; gender; memory; material culture; visual culture; critical museology

My research