From 16 to 17 April 2026, the University of Manchester hosted the Falklands/Malvinas Conflict Conference, a major international conference examining the legacy of the 1982 Anglo-Argentinian conflict. The event brought together leading experts, veterans and students from both sides. The interventions explored the enduring significance of the conflict nearly 45 years on, addressing its historical impact, contemporary relevance and future directions for research.
Dr Andrea Bellot participated in the panel ‘National Imaginaries, Sovereignty and Identity’ with the paper ‘”You have to get used to carrying two feelings at once,” Falkland Sound and the Islander as Witness.’ Dr Bellot’s paper examines Brad Birch’s Falkland Sound, the first major UK stage production in recent decades to revisit the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas conflict through the perspective of the islanders, and how the drama constructs the islander as witness and how its dramaturgy negotiates the tension between community self-definition and the external narratives imposed by both Britain and Argentina.
Drawing on cultural memory studies and theatre scholarship on narration, testimony, and affect, Bellot argues that Birch’s play stages the conflict as an epistemological struggle over who has the authority to narrate the war. Ultimately, Bellot suggests that Birch’s play contributes to a nascent Falklands/Malvinas theatre of memory by foregrounding small-scale affective histories—gossip, fear, resilience, and disorientation—while interrogating the competing national myths that continue to shape the conflict’s legacy.
