Dr Sebastian Raj Pender

Dr Sebastian Raj Pender is based at Balliol College where he is working on the Balliol and Empire project. His research interrogates the contested and contingent nature of (post)colonial memory, and explores a range of questions pertaining to identity, legitimacy, and power through the analysis of how Britain’s colonial past has consistently been (re)produced and (re)packaged for mass consumption within the constantly evolving present. 
 
Focusing on a broad range of commemorative practices including the construction of monuments, the hosting of anniversary ceremonies, and the naming of streets, his work is concerned with how contemporary exigencies, interests, and attitudes shape concurrent debates over how Britain’s imperial past should be remembered (or just as often forgotten) within specific historical moments. Adopting a position which sees memory as an indivisible function of the present, his research underlines the fact that remembering the past is always a political act, and underscores the extent to which empire has always been in a perpetual state of becoming as the past is negotiated by successive generations living within the ever-changing present.