Evaluating the experiences of British tourists and their consumption of extra-territorial heritage in Ypres, Belgium

Mooney, Andrew 2025. Evaluating the experiences of British tourists and their consumption of extra-territorial heritage in Ypres, Belgium. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis will explore British tourist experiences in the town of Ieper (Ypres), Belgium. This analysis will be centred around two research sites, the In Flanders Fields Museum located in the central square of the town and Tyne Cot cemetery, situated in the fields to the East of the town. It will utilise qualitative interviews to unpack the British tourist experience, focusing a number of themes that are outlined in the surrounding literature’s methodological base. These will include visitor motivation, expectations, emotion and feelings of nationality. In analysing these experiences, I aim to investigate the ways in which their experiences in Ypres cause them to reflect on their own nationality, engage with transnational memory and think about modern justifications of war and civil-military relations. The three primary literature bases from which this thesis draws are memory studies, heritage studies and dark tourism all, in essence highlight the same interaction; how do visitors at certain sites ‘make meaning’? What is it about this interaction that causes people to venture back to the same or different sites time and time again. Here, this interaction will be demonstrated to allow and encourage tourists to layer their experiences with their existing memory culture and allow for a productive exchange of these national perspectives. These exchanges are not antagonistic, but neither are they truly cosmopolitan. Rather they represent a form of multi-perspectival, transnational memory in which each national view is distinctly different, but still important and interesting. It will also be shown that these sites encourage visitors to question contemporary and historical justifications for war, placing the blame for these conflicts squarely at the feet of politicians and national leaders.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Modern Languages
Funders:	Economic and Social Research Council, In Flanders Fields Museum
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 October 2026
Last Modified:	15 Oct 2026 09:47
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/189949

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