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Framing public memory

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The study of public memory has grown rapidly across numerous disciplines in recent years, among them American studies, history, philosophy, sociology, architecture, and communications. As scholars probe acts of collective remembrance, they have shed light on the cultural processes of memory. Essays contained in this volume address issues such as the scope of public memory, the ways we forget, the relationship between politics and memory, and the material practices of memory.Stephen Browne's contribution studies the alternative to memory erasure, silence, and forgetting as posited by Hannah Arendt in her classic Eichmann in Jerusalem. Rosa Eberly writes about the Texas tower shootings of 1966, memories of which have been minimized by local officials. Charles Morris examines public reactions to Larry Kramer's declaration that Abraham Lincoln was homosexual, horrifying the guardians of Lincoln's public memory. And Barbie Zelizer considers the impact on public memory of visual images, specifically still photographs of individuals about to perish (e.g., people falling from the World Trade Center) and the sense of communal loss they manifest. Whether addressing the transitory and mutable nature of collective memories over time or the ways various groups maintain, engender, or resist those memories, this work constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of how public memory has been and might continue to be framed.

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Social Sciences

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Public memory and the politics of place

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essay on public memory

Pocho Research Society (Sandra de la Loza), Echoes en el Echo: A Series of Interventions about Memory, Place, and Gentrification

In Echoes en el Echo , De La Loza excavates forgotten fragments of L.A.’s past.

essay on public memory

Adel Abidin, Memorial

In 3-minute video work, contemporary Iraqi artist Adel Abidin uses computer generated imagery to narrate a poignant story of a stranded cow, that captures a day during the first Gulf War in 1991.

Daniel Libeskind, Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, UK

Daniel Libeskind, Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, UK

The museum's architectural design brings the personal tragic stories of the wars of the 20th century to visitors

essay on public memory

Kerry James Marshall, Our Town

The American Dream is not what it seems in this artwork that combines painting and collage

Contemporary politics and classical architecture

Contemporary politics and classical architecture

This federal building inspires discussion over neoclassical architecture's ties to the ideals of democracy and contemporary American politics

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Equal Justice Initiative)

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Equal Justice Initiative)

The first monument to commemorate the over 4,000 African Americans who were lynched in the early 20th century.

Yatika Starr Fields and mural painting

Yatika Starr Fields and mural painting

Yatika Starr Fields grew up in Tahlequah, in northeastern Oklahoma, whose nature and landscape continues to influence his work today.

Artist Richard Bell – ‘My Art is an Act of Protest’

Artist Richard Bell – ‘My Art is an Act of Protest’

Meet Richard Bell, an activist and artist who challenges preconceived ideas about Aboriginal art.

Birdhead – ‘We Photograph Things That Are Meaningful To Us’

Birdhead – ‘We Photograph Things That Are Meaningful To Us’

Shanghai based photographers Ji Weiyu and Song Tao, aka Birdhead, make art about everyday life in their home town.

SAAM: Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995

SAAM: Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995

Take a trip across the U.S.A. with Nam June Paik's "Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995."

essay on public memory

An-My Lê, 29 Palms

An-My Lê's photographs and films examine the impact, consequences, and representation of war, framing a tension between the natural landscape and its violent transformation into battlefields.

Graciela Iturbide, Photographing Mexico

Graciela Iturbide, Photographing Mexico

Rejecting the sensationalization of Mexico's injustices, Iturbide embeds herself within the communities when taking photographs

Selected Contributors

Dr. Renee Ater

Dr. Mindy Besaw, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Dr. Suzanne Newman Fricke

Dr. Anne Showalter

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  • Help & FAQ

Framing public memory

  • Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies

Research output : Book/Report/Essay › Book

The study of public memory has grown rapidly across numerous disciplines in recent years, among them American studies, history, philosophy, sociology, architecture, and communications. As scholars probe acts of collective remembrance, they have shed light on the cultural processes of memory. Essays contained in this volume address issues such as the scope of public memory, the ways we forget, the relationship between politics and memory, and the material practices of memory.Stephen Browne's contribution studies the alternative to memory erasure, silence, and forgetting as posited by Hannah Arendt in her classic Eichmann in Jerusalem. Rosa Eberly writes about the Texas tower shootings of 1966, memories of which have been minimized by local officials. Charles Morris examines public reactions to Larry Kramer's declaration that Abraham Lincoln was homosexual, horrifying the guardians of Lincoln's public memory. And Barbie Zelizer considers the impact on public memory of visual images, specifically still photographs of individuals about to perish (e.g., people falling from the World Trade Center) and the sense of communal loss they manifest. Whether addressing the transitory and mutable nature of collective memories over time or the ways various groups maintain, engender, or resist those memories, this work constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of how public memory has been and might continue to be framed.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Social Sciences

Other files and links

  • Link to publication in Scopus
  • Link to the citations in Scopus

Fingerprint

  • collective memory Social Sciences 100%
  • world trade Social Sciences 88%
  • homosexuality Social Sciences 86%
  • communications Social Sciences 73%
  • sociology Social Sciences 67%
  • politics Social Sciences 48%
  • history Social Sciences 46%
  • time Social Sciences 30%

T1 - Framing public memory

AU - Phillips, Kendall R.

AU - Browne, Stephen Howard

AU - Biesecker, Barbara

AU - Zelizer, Barbie

AU - Morris, Charles E.

N2 - The study of public memory has grown rapidly across numerous disciplines in recent years, among them American studies, history, philosophy, sociology, architecture, and communications. As scholars probe acts of collective remembrance, they have shed light on the cultural processes of memory. Essays contained in this volume address issues such as the scope of public memory, the ways we forget, the relationship between politics and memory, and the material practices of memory.Stephen Browne's contribution studies the alternative to memory erasure, silence, and forgetting as posited by Hannah Arendt in her classic Eichmann in Jerusalem. Rosa Eberly writes about the Texas tower shootings of 1966, memories of which have been minimized by local officials. Charles Morris examines public reactions to Larry Kramer's declaration that Abraham Lincoln was homosexual, horrifying the guardians of Lincoln's public memory. And Barbie Zelizer considers the impact on public memory of visual images, specifically still photographs of individuals about to perish (e.g., people falling from the World Trade Center) and the sense of communal loss they manifest. Whether addressing the transitory and mutable nature of collective memories over time or the ways various groups maintain, engender, or resist those memories, this work constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of how public memory has been and might continue to be framed.

AB - The study of public memory has grown rapidly across numerous disciplines in recent years, among them American studies, history, philosophy, sociology, architecture, and communications. As scholars probe acts of collective remembrance, they have shed light on the cultural processes of memory. Essays contained in this volume address issues such as the scope of public memory, the ways we forget, the relationship between politics and memory, and the material practices of memory.Stephen Browne's contribution studies the alternative to memory erasure, silence, and forgetting as posited by Hannah Arendt in her classic Eichmann in Jerusalem. Rosa Eberly writes about the Texas tower shootings of 1966, memories of which have been minimized by local officials. Charles Morris examines public reactions to Larry Kramer's declaration that Abraham Lincoln was homosexual, horrifying the guardians of Lincoln's public memory. And Barbie Zelizer considers the impact on public memory of visual images, specifically still photographs of individuals about to perish (e.g., people falling from the World Trade Center) and the sense of communal loss they manifest. Whether addressing the transitory and mutable nature of collective memories over time or the ways various groups maintain, engender, or resist those memories, this work constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of how public memory has been and might continue to be framed.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84895594570&partnerID=8YFLogxK

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SN - 9780817354909

BT - Framing public memory

PB - University of Alabama Press

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  • Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials

In this Book

Places of Public Memory

  • Edited by Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair, and Brian L. Ott
  • Published by: The University of Alabama Press
  • Series: Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique

Table of Contents

restricted access

  • Frontmatter
  • List of Illustrations
  • pp. vii-viii
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Rhetoric/Memory/Place / Carole Blair, Greg Dickinson, and Brian L. Ott
  • I. Rhetoric
  • 1. Radioactive History: Rhetoric, Memory, and Place in the Post–Cold War Nuclear Museum / Bryan C. Taylor
  • 2. Sparring with Public Memory: The Rhetorical Embodiment of Race, Power, and Conflict in the Monument to Joe Louis / Victoria J. Gallagher and Margaret R. LaWare
  • 3. Rhetorical Experience and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem / Gregory Clark
  • pp. 113-135
  • 4. Bad Dreams about the Good War: Bataan / John Bodnar
  • pp. 139-159
  • 5. You Were on Indian Land: Alcatraz Island as Recalcitrant Memory Space / Cynthia Duquette Smith and Teresa Bergman
  • pp. 160-188
  • 6. Tracing Mary Queen of Scots / Michael S. Bowman
  • pp. 191-215
  • 7. Memory’s Execution: (Dis)placing the Dissident Body / Bernard J. Armada
  • pp. 216-237
  • 8. The Master Naturalist Imagined: Directed Movement and Simulations at the Draper Museum of Natural History / Eric Aoki, Greg Dickinson, and Brian L. Ott
  • pp. 238-265
  • Selected Bibliography
  • pp. 267-278
  • Contributors
  • pp. 279-282

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Public or collective memory (which, for the purposes of this essay, we can generally define as the perceptions and uses of the past by the public-including both government and citizens) has, in recent years, become a topic of great interest for American and other historians. An interesting collaboration between more traditional intellectual history (the history of ideas), political and institutional history, and social history (the history of the people) that draws on anthropology, sociology, and related disciplines, research in American public memory has now produced some major studies. In the last several years three books on this topic have appeared that are important for North American archivists to know about and to consider, especially in their public programs and advocacy work. This essay analyzes the implications of these studies for archival work and theory.

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What makes a memory it may be related to how hard your brain had to work.

A human brain, background mechanical gears

(© stock.adobe.com)

The human brain filters through a flood of experiences to create specific memories. Why do some of the experiences in this deluge of sensory information become “memorable,” while most are discarded by the brain?

A computational model and behavioral study developed by Yale scientists suggests a new clue to this age-old question, they report in the journal Nature Human Behavior .

“ The mind prioritizes remembering things that it is not able to explain very well,” said Ilker Yildirim, an assistant professor of psychology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and senior author of the paper. “If a scene is predictable, and not surprising, it might be ignored.”

For example, a person may be briefly confused by the presence of a fire hydrant in a remote natural environment, making the image difficult to interpret, and therefore more memorable. “Our study explored the question of which visual information is memorable by pairing a computational model of scene complexity with a behavioral study,” said Yildirim.

For the study, which was led by Yildirim and John Lafferty, the John C. Malone Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Yale, the researchers developed a computational model that addressed two steps in memory formation — the compression of visual signals and their reconstruction.

Based on this model, they designed a series of experiments in which people were asked if they remembered specific images from a sequence of natural images shown in rapid succession. The Yale team found that the harder it was for the computational model to reconstruct an image, the more likely the image would be remembered by the participants.

“ We used an AI model to try to shed light on perception of scenes by people — this understanding could help in the development of more efficient memory systems for AI in the future,” said Lafferty, who is also the director of the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence at the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale. 

Former Yale graduate students Qi Lin (Psychology) and Zifan Lin (Statistics and Data Science) are co-first authors of the paper.

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  • Open access
  • Published: 13 May 2024

What are the strengths and limitations to utilising creative methods in public and patient involvement in health and social care research? A qualitative systematic review

  • Olivia R. Phillips 1 , 2   na1 ,
  • Cerian Harries 2 , 3   na1 ,
  • Jo Leonardi-Bee 1 , 2 , 4   na1 ,
  • Holly Knight 1 , 2 ,
  • Lauren B. Sherar 2 , 3 ,
  • Veronica Varela-Mato 2 , 3 &
  • Joanne R. Morling 1 , 2 , 5  

Research Involvement and Engagement volume  10 , Article number:  48 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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There is increasing interest in using patient and public involvement (PPI) in research to improve the quality of healthcare. Ordinarily, traditional methods have been used such as interviews or focus groups. However, these methods tend to engage a similar demographic of people. Thus, creative methods are being developed to involve patients for whom traditional methods are inaccessible or non-engaging.

To determine the strengths and limitations to using creative PPI methods in health and social care research.

Electronic searches were conducted over five databases on 14th April 2023 (Web of Science, PubMed, ASSIA, CINAHL, Cochrane Library). Studies that involved traditional, non-creative PPI methods were excluded. Creative PPI methods were used to engage with people as research advisors, rather than study participants. Only primary data published in English from 2009 were accepted. Title, abstract and full text screening was undertaken by two independent reviewers before inductive thematic analysis was used to generate themes.

Twelve papers met the inclusion criteria. The creative methods used included songs, poems, drawings, photograph elicitation, drama performance, visualisations, social media, photography, prototype development, cultural animation, card sorting and persona development. Analysis identified four limitations and five strengths to the creative approaches. Limitations included the time and resource intensive nature of creative PPI, the lack of generalisation to wider populations and ethical issues. External factors, such as the lack of infrastructure to support creative PPI, also affected their implementation. Strengths included the disruption of power hierarchies and the creation of a safe space for people to express mundane or “taboo” topics. Creative methods are also engaging, inclusive of people who struggle to participate in traditional PPI and can also be cost and time efficient.

‘Creative PPI’ is an umbrella term encapsulating many different methods of engagement and there are strengths and limitations to each. The choice of which should be determined by the aims and requirements of the research, as well as the characteristics of the PPI group and practical limitations. Creative PPI can be advantageous over more traditional methods, however a hybrid approach could be considered to reap the benefits of both. Creative PPI methods are not widely used; however, this could change over time as PPI becomes embedded even more into research.

Plain English Summary

It is important that patients and public are included in the research process from initial brainstorming, through design to delivery. This is known as public and patient involvement (PPI). Their input means that research closely aligns with their wants and needs. Traditionally to get this input, interviews and group discussions are held, but this can exclude people who find these activities non-engaging or inaccessible, for example those with language challenges, learning disabilities or memory issues. Creative methods of PPI can overcome this. This is a broad term describing different (non-traditional) ways of engaging patients and public in research, such as through the use or art, animation or performance. This review investigated the reasons why creative approaches to PPI could be difficult (limitations) or helpful (strengths) in health and social care research. After searching 5 online databases, 12 studies were included in the review. PPI groups included adults, children and people with language and memory impairments. Creative methods included songs, poems, drawings, the use of photos and drama, visualisations, Facebook, creating prototypes, personas and card sorting. Limitations included the time, cost and effort associated with creative methods, the lack of application to other populations, ethical issues and buy-in from the wider research community. Strengths included the feeling of equality between academics and the public, creation of a safe space for people to express themselves, inclusivity, and that creative PPI can be cost and time efficient. Overall, this review suggests that creative PPI is worthwhile, however each method has its own strengths and limitations and the choice of which will depend on the research project, PPI group characteristics and other practical limitations, such as time and financial constraints.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Patient and public involvement (PPI) is the term used to describe the partnership between patients (including caregivers, potential patients, healthcare users etc.) or the public (a community member with no known interest in the topic) with researchers. It describes research that is done “‘with’ or ‘by’ the public, rather than ‘to,’ ‘about’ or ‘for’ them” [ 1 ]. In 2009, it became a legislative requirement for certain health and social care organisations to include patients, families, carers and communities in not only the planning of health and social care services, but the commissioning, delivery and evaluation of them too [ 2 ]. For example, funding applications for the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), a UK funding body, mandates a demonstration of how researchers plan to include patients/service users, the public and carers at each stage of the project [ 3 ]. However, this should not simply be a tokenistic, tick-box exercise. PPI should help formulate initial ideas and should be an instrumental, continuous part of the research process. Input from PPI can provide unique insights not yet considered and can ensure that research and health services are closely aligned to the needs and requirements of service users PPI also generally makes research more relevant with clearer outcomes and impacts [ 4 ]. Although this review refers to both patients and the public using the umbrella term ‘PPI’, it is important to acknowledge that these are two different groups with different motivations, needs and interests when it comes to health research and service delivery [ 5 ].

Despite continuing recognition of the need of PPI to improve quality of healthcare, researchers have also recognised that there is no ‘one size fits all’ method for involving patients [ 4 ]. Traditionally, PPI methods invite people to take part in interviews or focus groups to facilitate discussion, or surveys and questionnaires. However, these can sometimes be inaccessible or non-engaging for certain populations. For example, someone with communication difficulties may find it difficult to engage in focus groups or interviews. If individuals lack the appropriate skills to interact in these types of scenarios, they cannot take advantage of the participation opportunities it can provide [ 6 ]. Creative methods, however, aim to resolve these issues. These are a relatively new concept whereby researchers use creative methods (e.g., artwork, animations, Lego), to make PPI more accessible and engaging for those whose voices would otherwise go unheard. They ensure that all populations can engage in research, regardless of their background or skills. Seminal work has previously been conducted in this area, which brought to light the use of creative methodologies in research. Leavy (2008) [ 7 ] discussed how traditional interviews had limits on what could be expressed due to their sterile, jargon-filled and formulaic structure, read by only a few specialised academics. It was this that called for more creative approaches, which included narrative enquiry, fiction-based research, poetry, music, dance, art, theatre, film and visual art. These practices, which can be used in any stage of the research cycle, supported greater empathy, self-reflection and longer-lasting learning experiences compared to interviews [ 7 ]. They also pushed traditional academic boundaries, which made the research accessible not only to researchers, but the public too. Leavy explains that there are similarities between arts-based approaches and scientific approaches: both attempts to investigate what it means to be human through exploration, and used together, these complimentary approaches can progress our understanding of the human experience [ 7 ]. Further, it is important to acknowledge the parallels and nuances between creative and inclusive methods of PPI. Although creative methods aim to be inclusive (this should underlie any PPI activity, whether creative or not), they do not incorporate all types of accessible, inclusive methodologies e.g., using sign language for people with hearing impairments or audio recordings for people who cannot read. Given that there was not enough scope to include an evaluation of all possible inclusive methodologies, this review will focus on creative methods of PPI only.

We aimed to conduct a qualitative systematic review to highlight the strengths of creative PPI in health and social care research, as well as the limitations, which might act as a barrier to their implementation. A qualitative systematic review “brings together research on a topic, systematically searching for research evidence from primary qualitative studies and drawing the findings together” [ 8 ]. This review can then advise researchers of the best practices when designing PPI.

Public involvement

The PHIRST-LIGHT Public Advisory Group (PAG) consists of a team of experienced public contributors with a diverse range of characteristics from across the UK. The PAG was involved in the initial question setting and study design for this review.

Search strategy

For the purpose of this review, the JBI approach for conducting qualitative systematic reviews was followed [ 9 ]. The search terms were (“creativ*” OR “innovat*” OR “authentic” OR “original” OR “inclu*”) AND (“public and patient involvement” OR “patient and public involvement” OR “public and patient involvement and engagement” OR “patient and public involvement and engagement” OR “PPI” OR “PPIE” OR “co-produc*” OR “co-creat*” OR “co-design*” OR “cooperat*” OR “co-operat*”). This search string was modified according to the requirements of each database. Papers were filtered by title, abstract and keywords (see Additional file 1 for search strings). The databases searched included Web of Science (WoS), PubMed, ASSIA and CINAHL. The Cochrane Library was also searched to identify relevant reviews which could lead to the identification of primary research. The search was conducted on 14/04/23. As our aim was to report on the use of creative PPI in research, rather than more generic public engagement, we used electronic databases of scholarly peer-reviewed literature, which represent a wide range of recognised databases. These identified studies published in general international journals (WoS, PubMed), those in social sciences journals (ASSIA), those in nursing and allied health journals (CINAHL), and trials of interventions (Cochrane Library).

Inclusion criteria

Only full-text, English language, primary research papers from 2009 to 2023 were included. This was the chosen timeframe as in 2009 the Health and Social Reform Act made it mandatory for certain Health and Social Care organisations to involve the public and patients in planning, delivering, and evaluating services [ 2 ]. Only creative methods of PPI were accepted, rather than traditional methods, such as interviews or focus groups. For the purposes of this paper, creative PPI included creative art or arts-based approaches (e.g., e.g. stories, songs, drama, drawing, painting, poetry, photography) to enhance engagement. Titles were related to health and social care and the creative PPI was used to engage with people as research advisors, not as study participants. Meta-analyses, conference abstracts, book chapters, commentaries and reviews were excluded. There were no limits concerning study location or the demographic characteristics of the PPI groups. Only qualitative data were accepted.

Quality appraisal

Quality appraisal using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist [ 10 ] was conducted by the primary authors (ORP and CH). This was done independently, and discrepancies were discussed and resolved. If a consensus could not be reached, a third independent reviewer was consulted (JRM). The full list of quality appraisal questions can be found in Additional file 2 .

Data extraction

ORP extracted the study characteristics and a subset of these were checked by CH. Discrepancies were discussed and amendments made. Extracted data included author, title, location, year of publication, year study was carried out, research question/aim, creative methods used, number of participants, mean age, gender, ethnicity of participants, setting, limitations and strengths of creative PPI and main findings.

Data analysis

The included studies were analysed using inductive thematic analysis [ 11 ], where themes were determined by the data. The familiarisation stage took place during full-text reading of the included articles. Anything identified as a strength or limitation to creative PPI methods was extracted verbatim as an initial code and inputted into the data extraction Excel sheet. Similar codes were sorted into broader themes, either under ‘strengths’ or ‘limitations’ and reviewed. Themes were then assigned a name according to the codes.

The search yielded 9978 titles across the 5 databases: Web of Science (1480 results), PubMed (94 results), ASSIA (2454 results), CINAHL (5948 results) and Cochrane Library (2 results), resulting in 8553 different studies after deduplication. ORP and CH independently screened their titles and abstracts, excluding those that did not meet the criteria. After assessment, 12 studies were included (see Fig.  1 ).

figure 1

PRISMA flowchart of the study selection process

Study characteristics

The included studies were published between 2018 and 2022. Seven were conducted in the UK [ 12 , 14 , 15 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 23 ], two in Canada [ 21 , 22 ], one in Australia [ 13 ], one in Norway [ 16 ] and one in Ireland [ 20 ]. The PPI activities occurred across various settings, including a school [ 12 ], social club [ 12 ], hospital [ 17 ], university [ 22 ], theatre [ 19 ], hotel [ 20 ], or online [ 15 , 21 ], however this information was omitted in 5 studies [ 13 , 14 , 16 , 18 , 23 ]. The number of people attending the PPI sessions varied, ranging from 6 to 289, however the majority (ten studies) had less than 70 participants [ 13 , 14 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. Seven studies did not provide information on the age or gender of the PPI groups. Of those that did, ages ranged from 8 to 76 and were mostly female. The ethnicities of the PPI group members were also rarely recorded (see Additional file 3 for data extraction table).

Types of creative methods

The type of creative methods used to engage the PPI groups were varied. These included songs, poems, drawings, photograph elicitation, drama performance, visualisations, Facebook, photography, prototype development, cultural animation, card sorting and creating personas (see Table  1 ). These were sometimes accompanied by traditional methods of PPI such as interviews and focus group discussions.

The 12 included studies were all deemed to be of good methodological quality, with scores ranging from 6/10 to 10/10 with the CASP critical appraisal tool [ 10 ] (Table  2 ).

Thematic analysis

Analysis identified four limitations and five strengths to creative PPI (see Fig.  2 ). Limitations included the time and resource intensity of creative PPI methods, its lack of generalisation, ethical issues and external factors. Strengths included the disruption of power hierarchies, the engaging and inclusive nature of the methods and their long-term cost and time efficiency. Creative PPI methods also allowed mundane and “taboo” topics to be discussed within a safe space.

figure 2

Theme map of strengths and limitations

Limitations of creative PPI

Creative ppi methods are time and resource intensive.

The time and resource intensive nature of creative PPI methods is a limitation, most notably for the persona-scenario methodology. Valaitis et al. [ 22 ] used 14 persona-scenario workshops with 70 participants to co-design a healthcare intervention, which aimed to promote optimal aging in Canada. Using the persona method, pairs composed of patients, healthcare providers, community service providers and volunteers developed a fictional character which they believed represented an ‘end-user’ of the healthcare intervention. Due to the depth and richness of the data produced the authors reported that it was time consuming to analyse. Further, they commented that the amount of information was difficult to disseminate to scientific leads and present at team meetings. Additionally, to ensure the production of high-quality data, to probe for details and lead group discussion there was a need for highly skilled facilitators. The resource intensive nature of the creative co-production was also noted in a study using the persona scenario and creative worksheets to develop a prototype decision support tool for individuals with malignant pleural effusion [ 17 ]. With approximately 50 people, this was also likely to yield a high volume of data to consider.

To prepare materials for populations who cannot engage in traditional methods of PPI was also timely. Kearns et al. [ 18 ] developed a feedback questionnaire for people with aphasia to evaluate ICT-delivered rehabilitation. To ensure people could participate effectively, the resources used during the workshops, such as PowerPoints, online images and photographs, had to be aphasia-accessible, which was labour and time intensive. The author warned that this time commitment should not be underestimated.

There are further practical limitations to implementing creative PPI, such as the costs of materials for activities as well as hiring a space for workshops. For example, the included studies in this review utilised pens, paper, worksheets, laptops, arts and craft supplies and magazines and took place in venues such as universities, a social club, and a hotel. Further, although not limited to creative PPI methods exclusively but rather most studies involving the public, a financial incentive was often offered for participation, as well as food, parking, transport and accommodation [ 21 , 22 ].

Creative PPI lacks generalisation

Another barrier to the use of creative PPI methods in health and social care research was the individual nature of its output. Those who participate, usually small in number, produce unique creative outputs specific to their own experiences, opinions and location. Craven et al. [ 13 ], used arts-based visualisations to develop a toolbox for adults with mental health difficulties. They commented, “such an approach might still not be worthwhile”, as the visualisations were individualised and highly personal. This indicates that the output may fail to meet the needs of its end-users. Further, these creative PPI groups were based in certain geographical regions such as Stoke-on-Trent [ 19 ] Sheffield [ 23 ], South Wales [ 12 ] or Ireland [ 20 ], which limits the extent the findings can be applied to wider populations, even within the same area due to individual nuances. Further, the study by Galler et al. [ 16 ], is specific to the Norwegian context and even then, maybe only a sub-group of the Norwegian population as the sample used was of higher socioeconomic status.

However, Grindell et al. [ 17 ], who used persona scenarios, creative worksheets and prototype development, pointed out that the purpose of this type of research is to improve a certain place, rather than apply findings across other populations and locations. Individualised output may, therefore, only be a limitation to research wanting to conduct PPI on a large scale.

If, however, greater generalisation within PPI is deemed necessary, then social media may offer a resolution. Fedorowicz et al. [ 15 ], used Facebook to gain feedback from the public on the use of video-recording methodology for an upcoming project. This had the benefit of including a more diverse range of people (289 people joined the closed group), who were spread geographically around the UK, as well as seven people from overseas.

Creative PPI has ethical issues

As with other research, ethical issues must be taken into consideration. Due to the nature of creative approaches, as well as the personal effort put into them, people often want to be recognised for their work. However, this compromises principles so heavily instilled in research such as anonymity and confidentiality. With the aim of exploring issues related to health and well-being in a town in South Wales, Byrne et al. [ 12 ], asked year 4/5 and year 10 pupils to create poems, songs, drawings and photographs. Community members also created a performance, mainly of monologues, to explore how poverty and inequalities are dealt with. Byrne noted the risks of these arts-based approaches, that being the possibility of over-disclosure and consequent emotional distress, as well as people’s desire to be named for their work. On one hand, the anonymity reduces the sense of ownership of the output as it does not portray a particular individual’s lived experience anymore. On the other hand, however, it could promote a more honest account of lived experience. Supporting this, Webber et al. [ 23 ], who used the persona method to co-design a back pain educational resource prototype, claimed that the anonymity provided by this creative technique allowed individuals to externalise and anonymise their own personal experience, thus creating a more authentic and genuine resource for future users. This implies that anonymity can be both a limitation and strength here.

The use of creative PPI methods is impeded by external factors

Despite the above limitations influencing the implementation of creative PPI techniques, perhaps the most influential is that creative methodologies are simply not mainstream [ 19 ]. This could be linked to the issues above, like time and resource intensity, generalisation and ethical issues but it is also likely to involve more systemic factors within the research community. Micsinszki et al. [ 21 ], who co-designed a hub for the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, commented that there is insufficient infrastructure to conduct meaningful co-design as well as a dominant medical model. Through a more holistic lens, there are “sociopolitical environments that privilege individualism over collectivism, self-sufficiency over collaboration, and scientific expertise over other ways of knowing based on lived experience” [ 21 ]. This, it could be suggested, renders creative co-design methodologies, which are based on the foundations of collectivism, collaboration and imagination an invalid technique in the research field, which is heavily dominated by more scientific methods offering reproducibility, objectivity and reliability.

Although we acknowledge that creative PPI techniques are not always appropriate, it may be that their main limitation is the lack of awareness of these methods or lack of willingness to use them. Further, there is always the risk that PPI, despite being a mandatory part of research, is used in a tokenistic or tick-box fashion [ 20 ], without considering the contribution that meaningful PPI could make to enhancing the research. It may be that PPI, let alone creative PPI, is not at the forefront of researchers’ minds when planning research.

Strengths of creative PPI

Creative ppi disrupts power hierarchies.

One of the main strengths of creative PPI techniques, cited most frequently in the included literature, was that they disrupt traditional power hierarchies [ 12 , 13 , 17 , 19 , 23 ]. For example, the use of theatre performance blurred the lines between professional and lay roles between the community and policy makers [ 12 ]. Individuals created a monologue to portray how poverty and inequality impact daily life and presented this to representatives of the National Assembly of Wales, Welsh Government, the Local Authority, Arts Council and Westminster. Byrne et al. [ 12 ], states how this medium allowed the community to engage with the people who make decisions about their lives in an environment of respect and understanding, where the hierarchies are not as visible as in other settings, e.g., political surgeries. Creative PPI methods have also removed traditional power hierarchies between researchers and adolescents. Cook et al. [ 13 ], used arts-based approaches to explore adolescents’ ideas about the “perfect” condom. They utilised the “Life Happens” resource, where adolescents drew and then decorated a person with their thoughts about sexual relationships, not too dissimilar from the persona-scenario method. This was then combined with hypothetical scenarios about sexuality. A condom-mapping exercise was then implemented, where groups shared the characteristics that make a condom “perfect” on large pieces of paper. Cook et al. [ 13 ], noted that usually power imbalances make it difficult to elicit information from adolescents, however these power imbalances were reduced due to the use of creative co-design techniques.

The same reduction in power hierarchies was noted by Grindell et al. [ 17 ], who used the person-scenario method and creative worksheets with individuals with malignant pleural effusion. This was with the aim of developing a prototype of a decision support tool for patients to help with treatment options. Although this process involved a variety of stakeholders, such as patients, carers and healthcare professionals, creative co-design was cited as a mechanism that worked to reduce power imbalances – a limitation of more traditional methods of research. Creative co-design blurred boundaries between end-users and clinical staff and enabled the sharing of ideas from multiple, valuable perspectives, meaning the prototype was able to suit user needs whilst addressing clinical problems.

Similarly, a specific creative method named cultural animation was also cited to dissolve hierarchies and encourage equal contributions from participants. Within this arts-based approach, Keleman et al. [ 19 ], explored the concept of “good health” with individuals from Stoke-on Trent. Members of the group created art installations using ribbons, buttons, cardboard and straws to depict their idea of a “healthy community”, which was accompanied by a poem. They also created a 3D Facebook page and produced another poem or song addressing the government to communicate their version of a “picture of health”. Public participants said that they found the process empowering, honest, democratic, valuable and practical.

This dissolving of hierarchies and levelling of power is beneficial as it increases the sense of ownership experienced by the creators/producers of the output [ 12 , 17 , 23 ]. This is advantageous as it has been suggested to improve its quality [ 23 ].

Creative PPI allows the unsayable to be said

Creative PPI fosters a safe space for mundane or taboo topics to be shared, which may be difficult to communicate using traditional methods of PPI. For example, the hypothetical nature of condom mapping and persona-scenarios meant that adolescents could discuss a personal topic without fear of discrimination, judgement or personal disclosure [ 13 ]. The safe space allowed a greater volume of ideas to be generated amongst peers where they might not have otherwise. Similarly, Webber et al. [ 23 ], , who used the persona method to co-design the prototype back pain educational resource, also noted how this method creates anonymity whilst allowing people the opportunity to externalise personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. Other creative methods were also used, such as drawing, collaging, role play and creating mood boards. A cardboard cube (labelled a “magic box”) was used to symbolise a physical representation of their final prototype. These creative methods levelled the playing field and made personal experiences accessible in a safe, open environment that fostered trust, as well as understanding from the researchers.

It is not only sensitive subjects that were made easier to articulate through creative PPI. The communication of mundane everyday experiences were also facilitated, which were deemed typically ‘unsayable’. This was specifically given in the context of describing intangible aspects of everyday health and wellbeing [ 11 ]. Graphic designers can also be used to visually represent the outputs of creative PPI. These captured the movement and fluidity of people and well as the relationships between them - things that cannot be spoken but can be depicted [ 21 ].

Creative PPI methods are inclusive

Another strength of creative PPI was that it is inclusive and accessible [ 17 , 19 , 21 ]. The safe space it fosters, as well as the dismantling of hierarchies, welcomed people from a diverse range of backgrounds and provided equal opportunities [ 21 ], especially for those with communication and memory difficulties who might be otherwise excluded from PPI. Kelemen et al. [ 19 ], who used creative methods to explore health and well-being in Stoke-on-Trent, discussed how people from different backgrounds came together and connected, discussed and reached a consensus over a topic which evoked strong emotions, that they all have in common. Individuals said that the techniques used “sets people to open up as they are not overwhelmed by words”. Similarly, creative activities, such as the persona method, have been stated to allow people to express themselves in an inclusive environment using a common language. Kearns et al. [ 18 ], who used aphasia-accessible material to develop a questionnaire with aphasic individuals, described how they felt comfortable in contributing to workshops (although this material was time-consuming to make, see ‘Limitations of creative PPI’ ).

Despite the general inclusivity of creative PPI, it can also be exclusive, particularly if online mediums are used. Fedorowicz et al. [ 15 ], used Facebook to create a PPI group, and although this may rectify previous drawbacks about lack of generalisation of creative methods (as Facebook can reach a greater number of people, globally), it excluded those who are not digitally active or have limited internet access or knowledge of technology. Online methods have other issues too. Maintaining the online group was cited as challenging and the volume of responses required researchers to interact outside of their working hours. Despite this, online methods like Facebook are very accessible for people who are physically disabled.

Creative PPI methods are engaging

The process of creative PPI is typically more engaging and produces more colourful data than traditional methods [ 13 ]. Individuals are permitted and encouraged to explore a creative self [ 19 ], which can lead to the exploration of new ideas and an overall increased enjoyment of the process. This increased engagement is particularly beneficial for younger PPI groups. For example, to involve children in the development of health food products, Galler et al. [ 16 ] asked 9-12-year-olds to take photos of their food and present it to other children in a “show and tell” fashion. They then created a newspaper article describing a new healthy snack. In this creative focus group, children were given lab coats to further their identity as inventors. Galler et al. [ 16 ], notes that the methods were highly engaging and facilitated teamwork and group learning. This collaborative nature of problem-solving was also observed in adults who used personas and creative worksheets to develop the resource for lower back pain [ 23 ]. Dementia patients too have been reported to enjoy the creative and informal approach to idea generation [ 20 ].

The use of cultural animation allowed people to connect with each other in a way that traditional methods do not [ 19 , 21 ]. These connections were held in place by boundary objects, such as ribbons, buttons, fabric and picture frames, which symbolised a shared meaning between people and an exchange of knowledge and emotion. Asking groups to create an art installation using these objects further fostered teamwork and collaboration, both at an individual and collective level. The exploration of a creative self increased energy levels and encouraged productive discussions and problem-solving [ 19 ]. Objects also encouraged a solution-focused approach and permitted people to think beyond their usual everyday scope [ 17 ]. They also allowed facilitators to probe deeper about the greater meanings carried by the object, which acted as a metaphor [ 21 ].

From the researcher’s point of view, co-creative methods gave rise to ideas they might not have initially considered. Valaitis et al. [ 22 ], found that over 40% of the creative outputs were novel ideas brought to light by patients, healthcare providers/community care providers, community service providers and volunteers. One researcher commented, “It [the creative methods] took me on a journey, in a way that when we do other pieces of research it can feel disconnected” [ 23 ]. Another researcher also stated they could not return to the way they used to do research, as they have learnt so much about their own health and community and how they are perceived [ 19 ]. This demonstrates that creative processes not only benefit the project outcomes and the PPI group, but also facilitators and researchers. However, although engaging, creative methods have been criticised for not demonstrating academic rigour [ 17 ]. Moreover, creative PPI may also be exclusive to people who do not like or enjoy creative activities.

Creative PPI methods are cost and time efficient

Creative PPI workshops can often produce output that is visible and tangible. This can save time and money in the long run as the output is either ready to be implemented in a healthcare setting or a first iteration has already been developed. This may also offset the time and costs it takes to implement creative PPI. For example, the prototype of the decision support tool for people with malignant pleural effusion was developed using personas and creative worksheets. The end result was two tangible prototypes to drive the initial idea forward as something to be used in practice [ 17 ]. The use of creative co-design in this case saved clinician time as well as the time it would take to develop this product without the help of its end-users. In the development of this particular prototype, analysis was iterative and informed the next stage of development, which again saved time. The same applies for the feedback questionnaire for the assessment of ICT delivered aphasia rehabilitation. The co-created questionnaire, designed with people with aphasia, was ready to be used in practice [ 18 ]. This suggests that to overcome time and resource barriers to creative PPI, researchers should aim for it to be engaging whilst also producing output.

That useable products are generated during creative workshops signals to participating patients and public members that they have been listened to and their thoughts and opinions acted upon [ 23 ]. For example, the development of the back pain resource based on patient experiences implies that their suggestions were valid and valuable. Further, those who participated in the cultural animation workshop reported that the process visualises change, and that it already feels as though the process of change has started [ 19 ].

The most cost and time efficient method of creative PPI in this review is most likely the use of Facebook to gather feedback on project methodology [ 15 ]. Although there were drawbacks to this, researchers could involve more people from a range of geographical areas at little to no cost. Feedback was instantaneous and no training was required. From the perspective of the PPI group, they could interact however much or little they wish with no time commitment.

This systematic review identified four limitations and five strengths to the use of creative PPI in health and social care research. Creative PPI is time and resource intensive, can raise ethical issues and lacks generalisability. It is also not accepted by the mainstream. These factors may act as barriers to the implementation of creative PPI. However, creative PPI disrupts traditional power hierarchies and creates a safe space for taboo or mundane topics. It is also engaging, inclusive and can be time and cost efficient in the long term.

Something that became apparent during data analysis was that these are not blanket strengths and limitations of creative PPI as a whole. The umbrella term ‘creative PPI’ is broad and encapsulates a wide range of activities, ranging from music and poems to prototype development and persona-scenarios, to more simplistic things like the use of sticky notes and ordering cards. Many different activities can be deemed ‘creative’ and the strengths and limitations of one does not necessarily apply to another. For example, cultural animation takes greater effort to prepare than the use of sticky notes and sorting cards, and the use of Facebook is cheaper and wider reaching than persona development. Researchers should use their discretion and weigh up the benefits and drawbacks of each method to decide on a technique which suits the project. What might be a limitation to creative PPI in one project may not be in another. In some cases, creative PPI may not be suitable at all.

Furthermore, the choice of creative PPI method also depends on the needs and characteristics of the PPI group. Children, adults and people living with dementia or language difficulties all have different engagement needs and capabilities. This indicates that creative PPI is not one size fits all and that the most appropriate method will change depending on the composition of the group. The choice of method will also be determined by the constraints of the research project, namely time, money and the research aim. For example, if there are time constraints, then a method which yields a lot of data and requires a lot of preparation may not be appropriate. If generalisation is important, then an online method is more suitable. Together this indicates that the choice of creative PPI method is highly individualised and dependent on multiple factors.

Although the limitations discussed in this review apply to creative PPI, they are not exclusive to creative PPI. Ethical issues are a consideration within general PPI research, especially when working with more vulnerable populations, such as children or adults living with a disability. It can also be the case that traditional PPI methods lack generalisability, as people who volunteer to be part of such a group are more likely be older, middle class and retired [ 24 ]. Most research is vulnerable to this type of bias, however, it is worth noting that generalisation is not always a goal and research remains valid and meaningful in its absence. Although online methods may somewhat combat issues related to generalisability, these methods still exclude people who do not have access to the internet/technology or who choose not to use it, implying that online PPI methods may not be wholly representative of the general population. Saying this, however, the accessibility of creative PPI techniques differs from person to person, and for some, online mediums may be more accessible (for example for those with a physical disability), and for others, this might be face-to-face. To combat this, a range of methods should be implemented. Planning multiple focus group and interviews for traditional PPI is also time and resource intensive, however the extra resources required to make this creative may be even greater. Although, the rich data provided may be worth the preparation and analysis time, which is also likely to depend on the number of participants and workshop sessions required. PPI, not just creative PPI, often requires the provision of a financial incentive, refreshments, parking and accommodation, which increase costs. These, however, are imperative and non-negotiable, as they increase the accessibility of research, especially to minority and lower-income groups less likely to participate. Adequate funding is also important for co-design studies where repeated engagement is required. One barrier to implementation, which appears to be exclusive to creative methods, however, is that creative methods are not mainstream. This cannot be said for traditional PPI as this is often a mandatory part of research applications.

Regarding the strengths of creative PPI, it could be argued that most appear to be exclusive to creative methodologies. These are inclusive by nature as multiple approaches can be taken to evoke ideas from different populations - approaches that do not necessarily rely on verbal or written communication like interviews and focus groups do. Given the anonymity provided by some creative methods, such as personas, people may be more likely to discuss their personal experiences under the guise of a general end-user, which might be more difficult to maintain when an interviewer is asking an individual questions directly. Additionally, creative methods are by nature more engaging and interactive than traditional methods, although this is a blanket statement and there may be people who find the question-and-answer/group discussion format more engaging. Creative methods have also been cited to eliminate power imbalances which exist in traditional research [ 12 , 13 , 17 , 19 , 23 ]. These imbalances exist between researchers and policy makers and adolescents, adults and the community. Lastly, although this may occur to a greater extent in creative methods like prototype development, it could be suggested that PPI in general – regardless of whether it is creative - is more time and cost efficient in the long-term than not using any PPI to guide or refine the research process. It must be noted that these are observations based on the literature. To be certain these differences exist between creative and traditional methods of PPI, direct empirical evaluation of both should be conducted.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review to identify the strengths and limitations to creative PPI, however, similar literature has identified barriers and facilitators to PPI in general. In the context of clinical trials, recruitment difficulties were cited as a barrier, as well as finding public contributors who were free during work/school hours. Trial managers reported finding group dynamics difficult to manage and the academic environment also made some public contributors feel nervous and lacking confidence to speak. Facilitators, however, included the shared ownership of the research – something that has been identified in the current review too. In addition, planning and the provision of knowledge, information and communication were also identified as facilitators [ 25 ]. Other research on the barriers to meaningful PPI in trial oversight committees included trialist confusion or scepticism over the PPI role and the difficulties in finding PPI members who had a basic understanding of research [ 26 ]. However, it could be argued that this is not representative of the average patient or public member. The formality of oversight meetings and the technical language used also acted as a barrier, which may imply that the informal nature of creative methods and its lack of dependency on literacy skills could overcome this. Further, a review of 42 reviews on PPI in health and social care identified financial compensation, resources, training and general support as necessary to conduct PPI, much like in the current review where the resource intensiveness of creative PPI was identified as a limitation. However, others were identified too, such as recruitment and representativeness of public contributors [ 27 ]. Like in the current review, power imbalances were also noted, however this was included as both a barrier and facilitator. Collaboration seemed to diminish hierarchies but not always, as sometimes these imbalances remained between public contributors and healthcare staff, described as a ‘them and us’ culture [ 27 ]. Although these studies compliment the findings of the current review, a direct comparison cannot be made as they do not concern creative methods. However, it does suggest that some strengths and weaknesses are shared between creative and traditional methods of PPI.

Strengths and limitations of this review

Although a general definition of creative PPI exists, it was up to our discretion to decide exactly which activities were deemed as such for this review. For example, we included sorting cards, the use of interactive whiteboards and sticky notes. Other researchers may have a more or less stringent criteria. However, two reviewers were involved in this decision which aids the reliability of the included articles. Further, it may be that some of the strengths and limitations cannot fully be attributed to the creative nature of the PPI process, but rather their co-created nature, however this is hard to disentangle as the included papers involved both these aspects.

During screening, it was difficult to decide whether the article was utilising creative qualitative methodology or creative PPI , as it was often not explicitly labelled as such. Regardless, both approaches involved the public/patients refining a healthcare product/service. This implies that if this review were to be replicated, others may do it differently. This may call for greater standardisation in the reporting of the public’s involvement in research. For example, the NIHR outlines different approaches to PPI, namely “consultation”, “collaboration”, “co-production” and “user-controlled”, which each signify an increased level of public power and influence [ 28 ]. Papers with elements of PPI could use these labels to clarify the extent of public involvement, or even explicitly state that there was no PPI. Further, given our decision to include only scholarly peer-reviewed literature, it is possible that data were missed within the grey literature. Similarly, the literature search will not have identified all papers relating to different types of accessible inclusion. However, the intent of the review was to focus solely on those within the definition of creative.

This review fills a gap in the literature and helps circulate and promote the concept of creative PPI. Each stage of this review, namely screening and quality appraisal, was conducted by two independent reviewers. However, four full texts could not be accessed during the full text reading stage, meaning there are missing data that could have altered or contributed to the findings of this review.

Research recommendations

Given that creative PPI can require effort to prepare, perform and analyse, sufficient time and funding should be allocated in the research protocol to enable meaningful and continuous PPI. This is worthwhile as PPI can significantly change the research output so that it aligns closely with the needs of the group it is to benefit. Researchers should also consider prototype development as a creative PPI activity as this might reduce future time/resource constraints. Shifting from a top-down approach within research to a bottom-up can be advantageous to all stakeholders and can help move creative PPI towards the mainstream. This, however, is the collective responsibility of funding bodies, universities and researchers, as well as committees who approve research bids.

A few of the included studies used creative techniques alongside traditional methods, such as interviews, which could also be used as a hybrid method of PPI, perhaps by researchers who are unfamiliar with creative techniques or to those who wish to reap the benefits of both. Often the characteristics of the PPI group were not included, including age, gender and ethnicity. It would be useful to include such information to assess how representative the PPI group is of the population of interest.

Creative PPI is a relatively novel approach of engaging the public and patients in research and it has both advantages and disadvantages compared to more traditional methods. There are many approaches to implementing creative PPI and the choice of technique will be unique to each piece of research and is reliant on several factors. These include the age and ability of the PPI group as well as the resource limitations of the project. Each method has benefits and drawbacks, which should be considered at the protocol-writing stage. However, given adequate funding, time and planning, creative PPI is a worthwhile and engaging method of generating ideas with end-users of research – ideas which may not be otherwise generated using traditional methods.

Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Abbreviations

Critical Appraisal Skills Programme

The Joanna Briggs Institute

National Institute of Health and Care Research

Public Advisory Group

Public and Patient Involvement

Web of Science

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Acknowledgements

With thanks to the PHIRST-LIGHT public advisory group and consortium for their thoughts and contributions to the design of this work.

The research team is supported by a National Institute for Health and Care Research grant (PHIRST-LIGHT Reference NIHR 135190).

Author information

Olivia R. Phillips and Cerian Harries share joint first authorship.

Authors and Affiliations

Nottingham Centre for Public Health and Epidemiology, Lifespan and Population Health, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Clinical Sciences Building, City Hospital Campus, Hucknall Road, Nottingham, NG5 1PB, UK

Olivia R. Phillips, Jo Leonardi-Bee, Holly Knight & Joanne R. Morling

National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) PHIRST-LIGHT, Nottingham, UK

Olivia R. Phillips, Cerian Harries, Jo Leonardi-Bee, Holly Knight, Lauren B. Sherar, Veronica Varela-Mato & Joanne R. Morling

School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK

Cerian Harries, Lauren B. Sherar & Veronica Varela-Mato

Nottingham Centre for Evidence Based Healthcare, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Jo Leonardi-Bee

NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2UH, UK

Joanne R. Morling

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Contributions

Author contributions: study design: ORP, CH, JRM, JLB, HK, LBS, VVM, literature searching and screening: ORP, CH, JRM, data curation: ORP, CH, analysis: ORP, CH, JRM, manuscript draft: ORP, CH, JRM, Plain English Summary: ORP, manuscript critical review and editing: ORP, CH, JRM, JLB, HK, LBS, VVM.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Olivia R. Phillips .

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Phillips, O.R., Harries, C., Leonardi-Bee, J. et al. What are the strengths and limitations to utilising creative methods in public and patient involvement in health and social care research? A qualitative systematic review. Res Involv Engagem 10 , 48 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-024-00580-4

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ISSN: 2056-7529

essay on public memory

Cities as Engines of Opportunities: Evidence from Brazil

Are developing-world cities engines of opportunities for low-wage earners? In this study, we track a cohort of young low-income workers in Brazil for thirteen years to explore the contribution of factors such as industrial structure and skill segregation on upward income mobility. We find that cities in the south of Brazil are more effective engines of upward mobility than cities in the north and that these differences appear to be primarily related to the exposure of unskilled workers to skilled co-workers, which in turn reflects industry composition and complexity. Our results suggest that the positive effects of urbanization depend on the skilled and unskilled working together, a form of integration that is more prevalent in the cities of southern Brazil than in northern cities. This segregation, which can decline with specialization and the division of labor, may hinder the ability of Brazil's northern cities to offer more opportunities for escaping poverty.

We acknowledge the support of Cristian Jara-Figueroa in the initial conceptualization of the empirical strategy. Barza and Viarengo gratefully acknowledges the financial support received from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Martina Viarengo; Research Grant n. 100018-176454). Hidalgo acknowledges the support of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche grant number ANR-19-P3IA-0004, the 101086712-LearnData-HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-TALENTS-01 financed by European Research Executive Agency (REA) (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101086712), IAST funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR) under grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d'Avenir program), and the European Lighthouse of AI for Sustainability [grant number 101120237-HOR-IZON-CL4-2022-HUMAN-02]. The usual caveats apply. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

I have received speaking fees from organizations that organize members that invest in real estate markets, including the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers, the Pension Real Estate Association and the Association for International Real Estate Investors.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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White House cites executive privilege over tapes of special counsel's Biden interview

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Attorney General Merrick Garland

President Biden has asserted executive privilege over the audio recordings of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur about Biden's handling of classified documents, according to the White House and the Justice Department.

The move comes as the Republican-led House Judiciary and Oversight committees are expected to advance a resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to provide the panels with the interview audio.

"Because of the President's longstanding commitment to protecting the integrity, effectiveness, and independence of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement investigations, he has decided to assert executive privilege over the recordings," Edward Siskel, counsel to the president, wrote in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

House Republicans are demanding the department turn over audio recordings of the interview special counsel Hur conducted with Biden in October 2023, about Biden's handling of classified documents after leaving the Obama administration. They also want the audio recording of Hur's interview with Biden's ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.

In his report, Hur described Biden as "an elderly man with a poor memory," remarks that angered the White House and its Democratic allies. House Republicans have pressed their demands for the audio itself, saying the committees get to determine what materials they need for their investigation, not the White House.

Special counsel Hur defended Biden classified documents probe before Congress

Special counsel Hur defended Biden classified documents probe before Congress

At a hearing Thursday, Chairman Jordan of the Judiciary Committee asserted the recordings are necessary because "the transcripts alone are not sufficient evidence of the state of the president's memory."

The judiciary panel went on to vote along party lines to recommend Garland be held in contempt.

Chairman Comer, of the Oversight Committee, said in a written statement that the White House had already waived the privilege by giving lawmakers a transcript of the Biden interview.

"Today's Hail Mary from the White House changes nothing for our committee," Comer added. "The House Oversight Committee will move forward with its markup of a resolution and report recommending to the House of Representatives that Attorney General Garland be held in contempt of Congress for defying a lawful subpoena."

In his letter, Siskel noted disclosure of materials like the audio would make it less likely that witnesses in future high-profile investigations will voluntarily cooperate. And, he noted: "The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal—to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes. Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials from the Executive Branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate."

Siskel added: "Rather than demonstrating respect for the rule of law, this contempt proceeding is just the latest in the Committees' damaging efforts to undermine the very independence and impartiality of the Department of Justice and criminal justice system that President Biden seeks to protect."

Interview transcript shows more nuance on Biden's memory than special counsel report

Interview transcript shows more nuance on Biden's memory than special counsel report

At the Justice Department Thursday morning, Attorney General Garland told reporters that DOJ had gone above and beyond the call of duty to provide information to the Republican-led House panels.

"We have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the committees get responses to their legitimate requests but this is not one," Garland said. "To the contrary, this is one that would harm our ability in the future to successfully pursue sensitive investigations."

Earlier, Garland wrote in a letter to Biden that the "audio recordings of your interview ... fall within the scope of executive privilege." His letter also cited audio recordings as an important investigative tool in high-profile investigations.

The Justice Department already has provided Congress a transcript of the interview , helped facilitate Hur's testimony before the committees, handed over two classified documents requested by the panels and provided correspondence regarding the special counsel's inquiry.

"In short, the department has responded to each of the four requests in your subpoenas," Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte said in a letter to the committees.

But he said the committees have failed to identified a need for the audio files of Biden's interview with Hur that would "serve the asserted purposes of your investigations."

He also pushed back on House Republicans' plan to hold Garland in contempt over the matter, saying "a contempt citation is not justified on this record."

"It is the longstanding position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the President's claim of executive privilege cannot be prosecuted for criminal contempt of Congress," Uriarte said in his letter to the panels.

"Production of these recordings to the Committees would raise an unacceptable risk of undermining the Department's ability to conduct similar high-profile criminal investigations-in particular, investigations where the voluntary cooperation of White House officials is exceedingly important," he wrote.

Uriarte urged the committees to back away from their contempt votes, and noted that there is precedent for doing so. He said that in 2008, the House Oversight Committee withdrew a contempt vote after President George W. Bush asserted executive privilege over the record of a special counsel interview of the vice president, Dick Cheney, in an investigation that centered on the disclosure of the identity of a CIA official.

In his brief public remarks Thursday morning, the attorney general cast the House move as part of a broader, partisan campaign against the institution of the Justice Department. Garland alluded to remarks by House members trying to defund the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who has obtained two indictments of former President Donald Trump.

"There have been a series of unprecedented and frankly unfounded attacks on the Justice Department," Garland said. "This request, this effort to use contempt as a method of obtaining our sensitive law enforcement files is just the most recent. The effort to threaten to defund our investigations and the way in which there are contributions to an atmosphere that puts our agents and our prosecutors at risk, these are wrong."

Garland said he would continue to "protect this building and its people."

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Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials

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2010, University of Alabama Press eBooks

Related Papers

Western Journal of Communication

Kendall Phillips

essay on public memory

Charlotte R Oestrich

Memorials often act as a container for the past, allowing people a space to put ghosts of the past. But what happens when that container is full of violent pasts? How can people reconcile tragedy through collective memory? Holocaust and World War Two memorials are prominent across Europe and even more so in eastern European countries like Poland. By examining collective memory presented in state-sanctioned memorials and the alternative rhetoric of countermemorials, I will investigate the imagined geography of texts, public memories. Memorials should act as more than a haunted container for the past; memorials should encourage a deconstruction of memory, self-scrutiny, and the formation of individual post-memory.

Ryan McGeough

This essay analyzes three highly-contested sacred spaces: Fetterman Battlefield, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, and Haymarket Square. Each was consecrated by the blood of the fallen, each was marked with a monument enshrining a particular narrative of its history, and each has been the site of sustained argument over who should be remembered. Therefore, each enables us to explore the visual argumentation of monuments, the functions of argument in sacred space, the use of sacred space to expand communal boundaries, the relation between mourning and blood consecration, and the ways in which visual argument may open, or close, consideration of who is deemed human and worthy of remembrance. Our examples demonstrate that, often, monuments' arguments are answered by expanding the lives that count as grievable, thereby opening spaces in which public grief may be made more inclusive.

Organization

Leanne Cutcher

Organisations engage in remembering and commemorative practices, often to produce effects of stability and continuity and to create shared meanings and culture, yet commemoration has been a relatively neglected theme in the study of organisations. The articles in this Special Issue range across diverse examples to provide a rich understanding of the dynamic and complex processes involved in the organisation of commemoration. In particular, they illustrate the importance of paying attention to materialities, spatiality and embodiment in the lived experience of practices of remembering.

Victoria Gallagher

ACME: International Journal for Critical Geographers

Ian G Baird , Emilia Palonen

Public debates and controversies over monuments, memorials, and place names have become contentious focal points for struggles over historical memory and social identity. This special issue critically examines the spatial politics involved in the making, unmaking, and remaking of memoryscapes conceived as assemblages of memory-objects, practices, and imaginaries that relationally constitute memory/spaces. The contributions consider how particular conceptions of the past are interwoven into the memoryscapes of the present in an attempt to legitimize a given social and political order. At the authority of the ruling power, and its hegemonic narratives of history, may be called into question. In this introductory article, we highlight key themes at the intersections of memory, place, and power, and consider several areas of emerging interest that have potential to advance critical geographical approaches to memory studies. Reflecting on the case studies discussed in this special issue, we also explore how the spatial, temporal, and political intertwine in the production of memoryscapes that may appear fixed and frozen for all time-especially when literally cast in stone-but often experience change in both subtle and profound ways.

Hilary Orange

Rhetoric & Public Affairs

Chandra A . Maldonado

As Kirt Wilson recently noted, contemporary memory and commemorative scholarship can sometimes be too narrowly focused on the centrality of material visual display to a historical narrative's persuasive power or institutional ideological structures, a tendency that ultimately valorizes and reinforces dominant narratives. In the face of that practice, I ask: How can we understand the extent to which institutionalized histories reinforce and stabilize hegemonic ideals of systems and structures while (dis)placing others? There are several potential answers to this question; the one I want to focus on here has to do with methodological choices. More specifically, I argue for an expansion of the focus of memory and commemorative scholarship to incorporate nondominant historical narratives. This can be achieved by using a methodological approach rooted in circulation theory as a corrective to a long-term focus on dominant (hegemonic) texts. Such an approach allows for memory and commemorative scholarship to employ multiple discourses and practices embedded in commemoration by critically engaging the ways in which hegemonic narratives and identities emerge and are enacted beyond what are traditionally understood to be the "material" structures of public memory.

Catherine Palczewski

This essay analyzes three highly-contested, sacred spaces: Fetterman Battlefield, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, and Haymarket Square. Each was consecrated by the blood o f the fallen, each was marked with a monument enshrining a particular narrative o f its history, and each has been the site o f sustained argument over who should be remembered. Therefore, each enables us to explore the visual argumentation o f monuments, the functions o f argument in sacred space, the use o f sacred space to expand communal boundaries, the relation between mourning and blood consecration, and the ways in which visual argument may open, or close, consideration o f who is deemed human and worthy o f remembrance. By focusing on attempts to rebut specific arguments made by existing monuments, we uncover the possibilities o f memory technologies designed to correct, expand upon, or contradict previous monuments. We reveal oppositional memory practices by demon­ strating how public arguments, made on/with particular sacred spaces and in particular times, evolve. M onuments' attempts to stabilize particular histories can be refuted in diverse ways, including: interpretive plaques that access counterhistories and punctuate a space with interruptions; subsequent counter-monuments that " answer back " to the original; and even destruction and/or replacement. Our examples demonstrate that, often, monuments' arguments are answered by expanding the lives that count as griev able, thereby opening spaces in which public grief may be made more inclusive. K ey W ords: visual argument, m em ory, oppositional m em ory practice, grievability, Fetterm an Battlefield, Little Bighorn Battlefield National M onum ent, H aym arket Square On a windswept hill in Wyoming, a cairn lamenting that " there were no survivors " now stands corrected by historical plaques recognizing 1,500 Indian survivors. On the high plains of eastern Montana, a sea of white marble tombstones now is interspersed with red granite warrior markers. In bustling Chicago, a tall, bronze police officer, removed from his original location, loses a century-long standoff with a nearby sculpture of Justice placing a wreath on a fallen laborer. The monuments that occupy sacred sites make arguments about who is worthy of mourning, honor, and remembrance. The monuments themselves endure, but their arguments often are controversial and judgments of worthiness have proven far less permanent. In his influential work, The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade (1959) offered an understanding of the sacred that still resonates within scholarship of sacred space. The sacred, he wrote, " reveals absolute reality and at the same time makes orientation possible; hence it founds the world in the sense that it fixes the limits and establishes the order of the world " (p. 31). Nowhere are these functions more apparent than in sacred spaces: spaces set apart from their surroundings, ritually dedicated to the memory of a particular event, hero, or victim, and frequently adorned with enduring markers—often for those who lost their lives there-that offer seemingly eternal narratives of origin and orientation (Foote, 2003, p. 8). By enshrining particular narratives on a sacred site, monuments suggest what is worthy of

Simona Mitroiu

The collective identity has, as main references, various ‘sites of memory’ that are not only mental constructions, but also physical places related to the collective common space, shared by a community – the city. The transformations occur at the level of cityscape, transformations that have as their object the sites of memory, and determine a series of modifications at the level of the collective narrative identity. This paper explores a range of political changes imposed at the cityscape level, approaching different aspects of the processes involved. Presenting some relevant concepts in order to sustain the theoretical frame of the research, in its second part the paper focuses on the complex relation between memory, narrative identity, city and political power, revealing the dynamics of this relation and of the representation of the sites of memory.

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COMMENTS

  1. Public Memory

    The Places of Public Memory. While investigations into memory and public address have a long history within rhetorical and communication studies, the role of place within the discipline is equally ancient. In the opening pages of Yate's The Art of Memory, the author tells the story of the poet Simonides of Ceos, who, it is told, left a banquet shortly before the roof collapsed, crushing all ...

  2. Framing public memory

    The study of public memory has grown rapidly across numerous disciplines in recent years, among them American studies, history, philosophy, sociology, architecture, and communications. As scholars probe acts of collective remembrance, they have shed light on the cultural processes of memory. Essays contained in this volume address issues such ...

  3. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials

    This exceptional book should be widely read by cultural historians, rhetoricians, students of public memory, designers of museums and public displays." —Journal of Popular Culture "Places of Public Memory, makes a compelling argument that rhetorical scholarship on public memory has yet to attend sufficiently to memory's material ...

  4. Project MUSE

    Essays contained in this volume address issues such as the scope of public memory, the ways we forget, the relationship between politics and memory, and the material practices of memory. Stephen Browne's contribution studies the alternative to memory erasure, silence, and forgetting as posited by Hannah Arendt in her classic Eichmann in ...

  5. Kendall R. Phillips, Framing Public Memory

    A collection of essays by prominent scholars from many disciplines on the construction of public memories The study of public memory has grown rapidly across numerous disciplines in recent years, among them American studies, history, philosophy, sociology, architecture, and communications. As scholars probe acts of collective remembrance, they ...

  6. Framing Public Memory

    A collection of essays by prominent scholars from many disciplines on the construction of public memories The study of public memory has grown rapidly across numerous disciplines in recent years, among them American studies, history, philosophy, sociology, architecture, and communications. As scholars probe acts of collective remembrance, they have shed light on the cultural processes of memory.

  7. Smarthistory

    Contribute an essay; ... Public memory and the politics of place. 1980-today. All content. Pocho Research Society (Sandra de la Loza), Echoes en el Echo: A Series of Interventions about Memory, Place, and Gentrification. In Echoes en el Echo, De La Loza excavates forgotten fragments of L.A.'s past.

  8. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials

    I suspect the editors' very comprehensive theoretical essay will find itself into many graduate syllabi. This exceptional book should be widely read by cultural historians, rhetoricians, students of public memory, designers of museums and public displays. Matthew J. Costello Saint Xavier University The Tube Has Spoken: Reality TV and History.

  9. Framing public memory

    The study of public memory has grown rapidly across numerous disciplines in recent years, among them American studies, history, philosophy, sociology, architecture, and communications. As scholars probe acts of collective remembrance, they have shed light on the cultural processes of memory. Essays contained in this volume address issues such ...

  10. Public Memory: The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting

    This essay explores how museums, public memory, and authenticity intersect to privilege an understanding of the past. Reflecting White control over the promotion of blues music, the curators at ...

  11. Project MUSE

    Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials is a sustained and rigorous consideration of the intersections of memory, place, and rhetoric. From the mnemonic systems inscribed upon ancient architecture to the roadside accident memorials that line America's highways, memory and place have always been deeply interconnected.

  12. Public History and Public Memory

    weeks of reading and discussion, the students write essays which analyze these messages within a discussion of the intersection of memory and history. I believe that it is an essential first step for public historians to understand the mindset and cultural milieu of their audiences before attempting to interpret the past for or with them.

  13. (PDF) The Pulse of Public Memory Lead Essay

    Public memory is the rhetorical construction and. circulation of a collectively shared sense of the past through symbolic and material supports, situ-. ated and uniformed to serve the needs and ...

  14. Rhetoric, Public Memory, and Campus History on JSTOR

    This essay collection explores the inextricable link between rhetoric, public memory, and campus history projects. Since the early twentieth century after Brown...

  15. PDF The Concept of Public Memory and Its Impact on Archival Public ...

    public memory. He commences his essay with this observation: Recording information and finding ways to keep and use it for long periods of time are ... Public Memory in the Early Twentieth Century: Case Studies in the Intersection of the Officiul and the Vernacular John Bodnar's Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in ...

  16. Public History and the Study of Memory

    phy is essential for teachers in public history programs, listing many more examples of the new scholarship on memory than can be mentioned in this essay. 2. The Organization of American Historians recently devoted an entire Council of Chairs newsletter to the question of "Rethinking Public History." Its five essays address many

  17. Houdek & Phillips, Public Memory. (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of

    Equally important, other scholars have focused on how individual moments of public address can seek to reconfigure the public's memory. In his 1974 essay, Thomas Benson examines the ways that Malcolm X's Autobiography works to frame the civil right's leader's complicated life as a series of "transcendent movements" that invite ...

  18. Review essay: Reading, rhetoric, and the texture of public memory

    REMAKING AMERICA: PUBLIC MEMORY, COMMEMORA TION, AND PA TRIOTISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. By John Bodnar. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992; pp. xviii + 296. $29.95; paper $14.95. THE RITES OF ASSENT: TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION OF AMERICA. By Sacvan Bercovitch.

  19. Review essay: Reading, rhetoric, and the texture of public memory

    MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY: THE TRANSFORMATION OF TRADITION IN AMERICAN CULTURE. By Michael Kammen. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991; pp. viii + 864. $40.00; paper $20.00. RECLAIMING THE PAST: LANDMARKS OF WOMEN'S HISTORY. Edited by Page Putman Miller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992; pp. vii + 232. $35.00. REMAKING AMERICA: PUBLIC MEMORY, COMMEMORA TION, AND PA TRIOTISM IN THE ...

  20. The Concept of Public Memory and Its Impact on Archival Public

    Public or collective memory (which, for the purposes of this essay, we can generally define as the perceptions and uses of the past by the public-including both government and citizens) has, in recent years, become a topic of great interest for American and other historians. An interesting collaboration between more traditional intellectual history (the history of ideas), political and ...

  21. Mnemosophy

    This is one of the conference papers meant to be part of the book Mnemosophy - an essay on the science of public memory. The book has just appeared (Dec. 2015) but does not contain that text (as announced in it); I have tried to keep the book as short as possible, aware that it will be anyhow accepted with reticence because of its relaxed, even superficial manner and intentionally naive idealism.

  22. What makes a memory? It may be related to how hard your ...

    It may be related to how hard your brain had to work. A computational model and behavioral study developed by Yale scientists gives a new clue to the age-old question of how our brain prioritizes what to remember. By Bill Hathaway. May 13, 2024. (© stock.adobe.com) The human brain filters through a flood of experiences to create specific memories.

  23. As schools reconsider cursive, research homes in on handwriting's ...

    Public Health; Twitter; ... Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, ... And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical ...

  24. What are the strengths and limitations to utilising creative methods in

    Background There is increasing interest in using patient and public involvement (PPI) in research to improve the quality of healthcare. Ordinarily, traditional methods have been used such as interviews or focus groups. However, these methods tend to engage a similar demographic of people. Thus, creative methods are being developed to involve patients for whom traditional methods are ...

  25. Cities as Engines of Opportunities: Evidence from Brazil

    Working Paper 32426. DOI 10.3386/w32426. Issue Date May 2024. Are developing-world cities engines of opportunities for low-wage earners? In this study, we track a cohort of young low-income workers in Brazil for thirteen years to explore the contribution of factors such as industrial structure and skill segregation on upward income mobility. We ...

  26. Adoption of the Public Debt Clause

    Footnotes Jump to essay-1 Earlier, in March 1865, the 39th Congress briefly sat in special session. See, e.g., Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., Special Sess. 1424 (Mar. 4, 1865) (opening of week-long special session). Jump to essay-2 Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 38 (Dec. 13, 1865) (reflecting the House's concurrence in the Senate amendment to the resolution establishing the Joint Committee on ...

  27. PDF Public History and the Uses of Memory

    Public History and the Uses of Memory MICHAEL KAMMEN There is a great deal to admire in David Glassberg's fine essay, "Public History and the Study of Memory."' It ought to be read by all historians, as well as by preservationists, city planners, and many others concerned about the place occupied by perceptions of the past in our lives ...

  28. Justice Department says Garland can't be held in contempt by Congress

    House Republicans want to hold the attorney general in contempt over the department's refusal to hand over an audio recording of a special counsel's interview with the president.

  29. Federal Register :: Medical Devices; Laboratory Developed Tests

    If you are using public inspection listings for legal research, you should verify the contents of the documents against a final, official edition of the Federal Register. Only official editions of the Federal Register provide legal notice of publication to the public and judicial notice to the courts under 44 U.S.C. 1503 & 1507.

  30. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials

    Finally, the essays in Places of Public Memory seem to point to the concepts of materiality, physicality, and presence. Although Clark's essay on the NJMIH clearly shows that museums need not follow the brick-and-mortar tradition to succeed in capturing the imaginations of their publics, the very fact that the NJMIH is working on plans to ...