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MLE grads received 2nd place in the 2014 Herta Macht Thesis Awards competition

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June 26, 2014

We are very proud to announce that a graduate of the MSc Leisure, Tourism and Environment (under supervision of the Cultural Geography Group), Manuela Ilakova, has received second place in the 2014 Herta Macht Thesis Awards organized by the Faculty of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen. The competition is open to all those who have recently finished their master's thesis in Dutch universities.

The annual thesis prize recognizes young talent and excellent research in the spatial sciences at the master's level. Manuela's thesis, entitled 'Museumizing Contested Heritages: Post-Communist Identity Politics and Representations of Communist Heritage in Bulgaria', was praised by the jury for being 'an exciting analysis of museumification' that was beautifully written and theoretically robust. 

Manuela is currently living in Dublin and doing an internship at the Little Museum of Dublin, which focuses on the city's 20th-century history, cultural and political life. She is leading a feasibility study on the rebuilding of a British imperial monument (in the Museum's backyard) that was destroyed in the 1960's by Irish Republicans and, in general, researching agitational propaganda and the 'subversive potential' of museums to challenge dominant historical narratives.