Academic research at IWM

IWM Institute is an Independent Research Organisation, working in partnership with leading universities on academic research projects that provide new insight into the history of war and conflict. We also host students studying IWM’s world class collections through our Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme.

Our appetite for new approaches and our curators' knowledge of our extensive collections provides an essential grounding to how we curate and present the history of conflict. Our research aims to speak not just to the academic community but to all our audiences.

Accessible Pasts, Equitable Futures

IWM’s reading room. The room is full of long white desks with swivel chairs. Running along one wall are shelves full of reference books for consultation.
© IWM
IWM London's Research Room.

Accessible Pasts, Equitable Futures is an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project that explores how IWM's digital heritage collections can be made more accessible to disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent researchers.

This two-year research project is led by researcher Ann-Marie Foster and covers both online digital collections, and ones that can only be accessed in IWM's Research Room. 

Read more about Accessible Pasts, Equitable Futures.

Recent projects

  • TIM HETHERINGTON

    The Tim Hetherington collection and Conflict Imagery Network

    Between 2020and 2022, the University of Leeds and IWM received Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding for a series of network events, which explored the archive of the award-winning conflict photographer Tim Hetherington.

    Find out more
  • A screenshot from the titles of a United Nations Television programme
    © UN610A

    Filming for Peace in 1990s Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina

    In 2019, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) awarded funding for an international research network led by Dr Catherine Baker, University of Hull which brought together researchers, museum professionals, journalists, peace-building experts and survivors of displacement to examine the work of United Nations Television and its collection, produced during the Yugoslav War and deposited at IWM in 1996. The UNTV collection contains 200 reports and video letters, over 2000 rushes, and around 700 documents, providing valuable insights into UNTV’s operations during the Yugoslav Wars.

     

    Find out more
  • A group of men crowd around the gates to a recruitment office in north India
    © IWM IND 1300

    Provisional Semantics

    In 2020, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) awarded funding for Provisional Semantics, one of eight Foundation Projects funded under 'Towards a National Collection', the five-year £18.9m research programme using digital technology to create a unified national collection of the UK's museums, libraries, galleries and archives

    A collaboration between Tate, The National Trust, Imperial War Museums and the Decolonising Arts Institute at the University of the Arts London, Provisional Semantics explored how museums and heritage organisations can engage in decolonising practices to produce search terms, catalogue entries and interpretations to support everyone to engage positively with a digitised national collection.

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More research projects

See our latest Research Reports.

Collaborative Doctoral Research

IWM supervises several Collaborative Doctoral Award students who are researching their PhDs through the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships Scheme. 

A group of CDP students sat around a table talking

Collaborative Doctoral Awards

Learn more about our Collaborative Doctoral Partnership programme, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

A view from the top of a ridge on the Falklands. Two helmets are visible against the blue sky.
© IWM (FKD 2779)

Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Projects

Explore CDP research projects with topics ranging from 'Dreaming and the First World War' to 'Surviving Modern War: experiences British service personnel in the Falklands campaign, 1982'.

Four students sit at a table in conversation

Student Testimonies

Read testimonials from past and present CDP students.

Beginning in January 2024 and running for 24 months, Cold War and ‘Other Narratives’  is a collaboration between IWM and the University of the Arts London (UAL), London College of Communications. Taking the Cold War as the dominant narrative, it explores diverse or buried stories that have impacted independence movements throughout the West’s colonial territories through the archives of IWM.