Dr David Farrell-Banks
CTPI Duncan Forrester Fellow, September 2026 - February 2027
Dr David Farrell-Banks is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work focuses on the impact of the past on everyday lives in the present.
His research background is in museums, heritage and cultural memory. David completed his PhD at Newcastle University in 2021, with work interrogating uses of the past in museums, heritage sites and political discourse now published as the monograph Affect and Belonging in Political Uses of the Past (2022, Routledge). He has since worked on the Museums, Crisis and Covid-19 project at Ulster University, and as a Practitioner Research Associate, specialising in collections and participation, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. He has published on a variety of topics including activist pedagogies in museums, galleries and heritage studies; co-creation of museum exhibitions; and the relationship between far right action, heritage and memory.
David joined the University of Edinburgh in 2025 as Lecturer in Heritage and Co-Director of the MSc Cultural Heritage Futures programme at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
Alongside his research and teaching work, David is a heritage and museum practitioner. His recent work at the Fitzwilliam Museum explored the potential for increased agency of community voices in the work of the museum, and potentials for organisational change through participation.
He is a member of the steering committee for the UK Participatory Research Network.
Project title: The Church and the Far-Right in Scotland: Participatory Approaches to Cultural Peacebuilding at a time of Increased Far-Right Christian Nationalism
This project interrogates the impact within Scotland of a rise in far-right rhetoric which claims to be Christian and draws on Christian heritage. Developed as a collaborative project, the work will explore how Christian heritage is mobilised among far-right groups and the potentials for theologically-rooted progressive approaches to peacebuilding. The work bring together both critical heritage, theology and peacebuilding through a focus on shared engagement with narrative practice and the empowerment of marginalised voices across these disciplines. The fellowship will facilitate dialogue across these disciplines and practices, while seeking to develop networks that can support longer-term counterextremist peacebuilding practice. Using methods rooted in dialogic participatory practice and critical discourse analysis, the fellowship intends to co-create guidance that can inform future public theological and heritage practice in addition to exploring opportunities for future collaborative research projects and funding.