My project, “Rethinking Heritage: Studying Resilient Pasts and Presents in Times of Conflict”, has retained its original title through the entire research process, which is surprising considering the number of changes everything else has gone through. Contained in those words is not a thesis or a hypothesis, not a particularly well-defined scope or very many specifics to help guide me. When my supervisor, Dr. Bruno Brulon Soares, and I came up with a title for the project, it was necessary to build in a type of security, a cautious vagueness which would ensure that I didn’t close myself off to different avenues and directions of research. The search for a meaningful research question, though, proved a greater challenge…

I began thinking about applying to the Laidlaw Research and Leadership programme with a question in mind. I was fascinated by the protection of art and cultural heritage around the world, made so relevant by the intentional destruction of heritage occurring in the twenty-first century. Specifically, I was interested in the history of such efforts, which I didn’t think had been adequately told. When the Laidlaw application itself came around, however, it became clear that I was in over my head. Trying to tell the entire history of heritage protection efforts around the world was, to say the least, ambitious. Paring down my topic and my scope was critical.

Choosing Latin America was the first big step I took towards the creation of a realistic research question, made because I wanted to discover a part of the world I had never felt I knew the real history of. Focusing on Post-Colonial Latin America was the next step. And the steps continued. Latin America is too large a region to do justice to in my short six weeks, and so I chose a few nations to take as case studies: Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba. Then I needed some specifics to look for, a guide to help me as I carefully picked through sources. I decided on individual instances of heritage protection in conflict zones, something which was clear and specific and could still encompass a diversity of individuals, institutions, nations, and time periods.

And just as I felt that I had come up with a research question which was specific enough to tell a meaningful story of heritage protection without over-extending myself, the shock set in. It began with the sources, or perhaps I should say the lack of certain sources. As I quickly devoured what I could find in the library that pertained to my specific topic, I turned to digital sources and was struck by the strangeness of the research process. Only then did I realise the extent to which researchers are alone, armed with an approach that is not quite the same as anyone else’s. I should have expected it, but it was a surprise to find that no one I came across had approached the same history in the same way as I did. Thousands of people have written about heritage in Latin America, but not one of them had yet told the story I wanted to tell.

That story changed. If there is one takeaway I have about the research process after my six weeks, it is that it is fruitless to fight the sources. Trying to remove sources from their original context to artificially fit a narrative constructed by a scholar is not productive. The greatest hardship I faced in my research was discovering how to listen. I took stock of the written material I had available and the information it held and did my best to listen to the story it was telling. It ended up being different from what I had been searching for.

The sources I had were (at least mostly) not full of the thrilling accounts of Latin American Heritage protection I had hoped for. There were fewer tales of hiding precious objects to avoid their destruction amid war and more stories of administrative transformation. The real story that I had access to, I discovered, was not the story of heritage protection itself, really, but the story of the story of heritage protection. I was looking not at the how heritage was protected from harm in times of conflict, but at how governments and individuals came to terms with the very definition of heritage in those challenging times and how they thought about protection. I was looking at broad, often slow institutional changes rather than individual flashpoints.

The final phase of my project’s transformation is not yet complete. I am now in the process of grappling with the big question facing any research: “so what?” The relevance of my project to the rest of the world is slowly unveiling itself, showing me that heritage is really a lens unto itself for viewing everything else. Measures of national and regional identity are abundant, and I am seeking to use my project to add to their number the ‘institutional heritage’ measure. The sources I have spent my summer with do not just tell tales of art and cultural heritage. They are stories of the psyches of nations in war. They are stories of the conflicting impulses of freedom and control as exercised by states. Most of all, they are the stories of what human beings value and care to protect, how that changes over time, and which factors can be tied to these changes. In short, they are the stories of our past, present, and future.

From this project, I have learned that the research question should be guided by the research itself far more than the reverse. When we first formulate questions, we guide ourselves towards the sources which will make up our project – but that is the extent to which the first research question is the correct one to be asking. Being unafraid of change and truly listening to the story that is naturally falling into place as sources are brought together takes a degree of courage and trust which I did not have before this project and which I will value for a long time to come. In changing my research question again and again, I found the soul of the project and I found myself as a researcher.

I’d like to express my gratitude towards my advisor Dr Bruno Brulon Soares, my wonderful Laidlaw cohort, Lord Laidlaw and the Laidlaw Foundation for making my participation in this project possible.