Beyond Borders Research Project

Beyond Borders: The Second World War, National Identities and Empire in the UK is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, Swansea University and the IWM funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research & Innovation (UKRI). 

The project examines how the peoples of the home nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) perceived their national identity and sense of belonging during the Second World War, and the extent to which this shifted as people moved across the British Empire at war.

It explores military and civilian migration within the UK; imperial encounters amongst service personnel and civilian workforces in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia; and post-war migratory movements of colonial and Commonwealth veterans into the UK. 

The Learning & Engagement team at IWM will work with schools and teachers across all four nations and use IWM collections to create learning resources (KS3/Third Level) across these research themes, aligned to the curriculum of the four nations.  In addition, CPD will be facilitated for teachers to explore the themes of identity, empire, and colonial encounters – from local to global contexts. 

This project is the first comparative study to integrate England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and their wartime relationships to Britishness, and to the British Empire, into a single frame.

Who is involved? 

Principal Investigator 

Professor Wendy Ugolini, University of Edinburgh 

Professor Wendy Ugolini is Professor of Second World War Studies at the University of Edinburgh.  She is an award-winning cultural-military historian of the Second World War, specialising in ethnicities, race and identity formation.  

Co-Investigators 

Professor Martin Johnes, University of Swansea 

Martin Johnes is Professor of Modern History and specialises in the histories of Wales and popular culture in modern Britain. At the heart of most of his research are questions of identity: how people think of who they are and their place in their world through and in a variety of different settings. 

Nadine Wright, Executive Producer, Schools and Families, Imperial War Museum 

Nadine Wright is responsible for the management and development of the Learning & Engagement programme across IWM’s five branches. As Co-Investigator, Nadine works together with the universities and IWM Producer to build sustainable relationships with schools from across the UKs curriculums, through devising a series of events, resources and outreach to pupils and teachers. 

Other Staff 

Flavia Cahn, Producer, Schools and Families, Imperial War Museum 

Flavia Cahn has a background in decolonial museum practice and will support the development of new learning resources and CPD for teachers.

Scope 

The project examines the impact of the Second World War on national identity through the following research questions: 

1: Crossing Borders - How did differences of ethnicity, gender, language, class and religion shape wartime encounters within the UK and inform ideas of national and racial difference amongst a mobile population? To what extent did the widely promoted image of UK togetherness skate over sites of tension and how were these negotiated? 

2: Imperial Encounters - In what ways were national identities informed or transformed by the experience of serving alongside colonial soldiers within the British Empire? How did the wartime construction of national and ethnic identities interact, or not, with a sense of imperial Britishness? Did wartime encounters and experiences across a global empire produce a sense of imperial belonging or heighten awareness of cultural distinctiveness? 

3: Memory & Legacies- How was the war remembered and commemorated in the constituent nations of the UK in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and did a post-imperial and post-devolutionary landscape produce change? To what extent has memory of the Second World War been utilised in campaigns for sovereignty and independence? What sites of memorialisation were claimed by migrant groups from the colonies and Commonwealth in post-war UK society?

Teacher Forums

Throughout January 2025, we consulted with schools and teachers across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to hear from them how we can best tailor our learning offer to the needs of educators and KS3/Third Year students.  Across the five Teacher Forums we hosted, teachers had the opportunity to connect with each other and share their views and needs with us.  

The outcomes of the Teacher Forums will shape the structure and content of the learning resources we will create as part of Beyond Borders.  Thank you to all the teachers that took part!  

Schools' Workshops

In March 2025, we followed up with Teacher Forum participants and selected seven schools to visit and deliver a free workshop on the project themes of empire, identity and belonging to the Second World War.  A range of schools including comprehensives, grammar schools, academies and fee-paying schools took part.  Workshops were either assembly or classroom based, depending on the needs of each school.  All workshops included object handling of our Second World War Loan Box items.  

Schools that participated in the Beyond Borders workshops are based in Dundee and Perth & Kinross (Scotland); Skegness, Cambridgeshire and London (England); Bangor (Northern Ireland) and Caerphilly (Wales).  

Over 620 students engaged with IWM and the Beyond Borders project as part of this initiative!