Past Events
This page serves as an archive of details of Connecting Memories events and podcast episodes to date.
Connecting Memories Podcast - Bonus Episode
A special bonus episode was released in September 2022.
The speaker was:
Prof Peter Davies (University of Edinburgh)
'The Holocaust and Translation: a Complex Relationship.
The speaker was:
Prof Peter Davies (University of Edinburgh)
'The Holocaust and Translation: a Complex Relationship.
Connecting Memories Podcast Series 3
A third series of the Connecting Memories Podcast appeared in 2022, featured more internationally renowned memory studies experts.
The speakers were:
Episode 1
Prof James Young (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
‘The Memorialist’
Episode 2
Dr László Muntean (Radboud University Nijmegen)
‘Memory and Materiality: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center’
Episode 3
Prof Max Silverman (University of Leeds)
'Impure Memory'
Episode 4
Prof Katharina Niemeyer (Université du Québec à Montréal)
'The Power of Nostalgia’
Episode 5
Prof Michael Rothberg (University of California, Los Angeles)
‘Debating Holocaust Memory: The Politics of Comparison in Contemporary Germany’
The speakers were:
Episode 1
Prof James Young (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
‘The Memorialist’
Episode 2
Dr László Muntean (Radboud University Nijmegen)
‘Memory and Materiality: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center’
Episode 3
Prof Max Silverman (University of Leeds)
'Impure Memory'
Episode 4
Prof Katharina Niemeyer (Université du Québec à Montréal)
'The Power of Nostalgia’
Episode 5
Prof Michael Rothberg (University of California, Los Angeles)
‘Debating Holocaust Memory: The Politics of Comparison in Contemporary Germany’
Connecting Memories Podcast - Covid-19 Anniversary Specials
Two Covid-19 Pandemic Anniversary specials were published in March 2021.
The speakers were:
Episode 1
Prof Astrid Erll (Goethe University Frankfurt)
On Coronavirus and Collective Memory.
Episode 2
Prof Marianne Hirsch (Columbia University)
On Coronavirus, Memory and Repair
For more comprehensive information about the Connecting Memories Podcasts including listening links,
please click here.
The speakers were:
Episode 1
Prof Astrid Erll (Goethe University Frankfurt)
On Coronavirus and Collective Memory.
Episode 2
Prof Marianne Hirsch (Columbia University)
On Coronavirus, Memory and Repair
For more comprehensive information about the Connecting Memories Podcasts including listening links,
please click here.
Connecting Memories Podcast Series 2
In response to the success of the first series of the Connecting Memories Podcast, a second series was produced and published in the Spring/Summer 2020.
The speakers on the second series were:
Episode 1
Dr Gyorgy Toth (University of Stirling)
‘Memory, performance, and Native American sovereignty rights’
Episode 2
Prof Anne Fuchs (University College Dublin)
‘When did postwar German memory culture end: from dividedpresents a talk entitled memory to a pluralistic memory culture’
Episode 3
Prof Ann Rigney (University of Utrecht)
‘The Afterlife of Hope: how the killing of demonstrators is remembered'
Episode 4
Prof Patrizia Violi (University of Bologna)
‘What future for contested monuments?’
Episode 5
Dr Sarah Gensburger (CNRS)
‘From ordinary memory to extraordinary heritage: a study of the memorialisation of the 2015 attacks in Paris?’
For more comprehensive information about the Connecting Memories Podcasts including listening links,
please click here.
The speakers on the second series were:
Episode 1
Dr Gyorgy Toth (University of Stirling)
‘Memory, performance, and Native American sovereignty rights’
Episode 2
Prof Anne Fuchs (University College Dublin)
‘When did postwar German memory culture end: from dividedpresents a talk entitled memory to a pluralistic memory culture’
Episode 3
Prof Ann Rigney (University of Utrecht)
‘The Afterlife of Hope: how the killing of demonstrators is remembered'
Episode 4
Prof Patrizia Violi (University of Bologna)
‘What future for contested monuments?’
Episode 5
Dr Sarah Gensburger (CNRS)
‘From ordinary memory to extraordinary heritage: a study of the memorialisation of the 2015 attacks in Paris?’
For more comprehensive information about the Connecting Memories Podcasts including listening links,
please click here.
In response to the success of the first series of the Connecting Memories Podcast, a second series was produced and published in the Spring/Summer 2020.
The speakers on the second series were:
Episode 1
Dr Gyorgy Toth (University of Stirling)
‘Memory, performance, and Native American sovereignty rights’
Episode 2
Prof Anne Fuchs (University College Dublin)
‘When did postwar German memory culture end: from dividedpresents a talk entitled memory to a pluralistic memory culture’
Episode 3
Prof Ann Rigney (University of Utrecht)
‘The Afterlife of Hope: how the killing of demonstrators is remembered'
Episode 4
Prof Patrizia Violi (University of Bologna)
‘What future for contested monuments?’
Episode 5
Dr Sarah Gensburger (CNRS)
‘From ordinary memory to extraordinary heritage: a study of the memorialisation of the 2015 attacks in Paris?’
For more comprehensive information about the Connecting Memories Podcasts including listening links,
please click here.
The speakers on the second series were:
Episode 1
Dr Gyorgy Toth (University of Stirling)
‘Memory, performance, and Native American sovereignty rights’
Episode 2
Prof Anne Fuchs (University College Dublin)
‘When did postwar German memory culture end: from dividedpresents a talk entitled memory to a pluralistic memory culture’
Episode 3
Prof Ann Rigney (University of Utrecht)
‘The Afterlife of Hope: how the killing of demonstrators is remembered'
Episode 4
Prof Patrizia Violi (University of Bologna)
‘What future for contested monuments?’
Episode 5
Dr Sarah Gensburger (CNRS)
‘From ordinary memory to extraordinary heritage: a study of the memorialisation of the 2015 attacks in Paris?’
For more comprehensive information about the Connecting Memories Podcasts including listening links,
please click here.
Connecting Memories Podcast Series 1
The first series of the Connecting Memories Podcast was released in Spring 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic. It immediately garnered a large international listenership.
The speakers on the first series were:
Episode 1
Prof Edward Hollis (ECA, University of Edinburgh)
‘Secret Lives, Memory Palaces and Concrete Monstrosities’
Episode 2
Prof Bill Niven (Nottingham Trent University)
'Reigniting Relevance: Recent Approaches to Memorial Heritage’
Episode 3
Dr Leila Kamali (@kamali_leila)
'Cultural Memory Past, Present and Future in the work of John Edgar Wideman’
Episode 4
Prof John Sutton (Macquarie University)
‘Distributed Ecologies of Remembering’
Episode 5
Prof Akiko Hashimoto (Portland State University)
‘Something Dreadful Happened in the Past: War Memories in Japan’
For more comprehensive information about the Connecting Memories Podcasts including listening links,
please click here.
Connecting Memories 2020 Symposium with Postgraduate Masterclass
Thanks to everyone who participated in the Connecting Memories 2020 Symposium with Postgraduate Masterclass, a one-day event exploring memory as a transdisciplinary research object and the multitude of ways of approaching it as such. The event was another great success!
As well as offering plentiful networking opportunities, the event was composed of sessions consisting of
short presentations, in which speakers present their research and methods,
as well as a keynote lecture by Professor Astrid Erll (Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt a. M.).
In addition, Prof Erll held a masterclass for postgraduate students.
Originally planned to take place on Monday, 29th June 2020 in 50 George Square, Edinburgh, the symposium was held online as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
While symposium sessions were only be accessible for delegates,
the keynote lecture was livestreamed on YouTube and is available to watch below.
The original call for papers for the symposium can also be found below.
They keynote lecture was given by
Prof Astrid Erll (Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt a. M.)
and was entitled
‘Corona and Collective Memory'.
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Connecting Memories Film Screening Series
Poster for the first film in the series.
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Thanks to everyone that came along to the Connecting Memories film screenings this semester.
The series was a great success. We hope that you enjoyed watching the films as much as we enjoyed curating the series. *** This semester we will be showing a series of films that, while widely divergent, all revolve around questions of memory. Each film will be very briefly introduced and there will be an opportunity to discuss the films afterwards. |
For more details of the Connecting Memories Film Screening Series including the full programme,
please click here.
please click here.
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In the tenth Connecting Memories Keynote Lecture
Dr Zoë Roth (Durham University) presented a paper entitled ‘How to Survive a Tyrant. Lessons from Literary Criticism.’ The lecture and ensuing Q&A took place on Friday, 6th December 2019 at 5.15pm in the Usha Kasera Lecture Theatre in Old College, Edinburgh Thanks to everyone who came along! The poster for this event can be downloaded here:
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The ruins of Warsaw ghetto by Israel Gutman.
About Dr Zoë Roth: Zoë Roth is Assistant Professor of French at Durham University. Her research largely focuses on two things: bodies and Jews. She has been awarded grants and fellowships by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, the Harry Ransom Center (UT Texas at Austin), the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust. She has published articles on French and francophone literature and visual culture, Jewish studies, and the Holocaust in such journals as the Journal of Modern Literature and Word & Image. |
Abstract: The Trump presidency has invited comparisons with fascism and totalitarianism. Far from living at the ‘end of history,’ the sense of traditions, norms, and conventions suddenly giving way has come to shape the political and cultural imaginary of the United States and Europe. Indeed, in the days following the election, Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism sold out on Amazon and was regularly cited in journalism and popular scholarship on Trumpism. In Origins, Arendt argues that totalitarianism and fascism axiomatically arrange facts to create ideologies that offer a “the total explanation” that is severed from the world individuals perceive through the “five senses, and insists on a ‘truer’ reality concealed behind all perceptible things” (470-71). Totalitarianism and fascism thus work at the level of perception—by changing what appears true, they produce new realities. The question of perception and appearance point to the important role that the aesthetic plays in Arendt’s political philosophy, which also extends to her analysis of visibility, judgment, and the work of art in later books like The Human Condition and The Life of the Mind. Yet to date, her thinking on the aesthetic has not been put into dialogue with her work on totalitarianism, fascism, and terror. This paper thus explores the way aesthetic criticism and the work of art mediate the cultural memory of totalitarianism. Rather than advocating for politicized or ideological readings of aesthetic objects, however, the paper argues that an autonomous approach to the aesthetic provides a bulwark against the irreality of totalitarianism (against ‘alternative facts,’ if you will) by constructing a durable space outside the temporality of politics. It thus develops a mode of ‘political formalism’ that argues literature, art, and drama can foster forms of autonomy and memory that resist the crises of perception brought on by extreme political movements. |
This post was originally published 9th December 2019.
The ninth Connecting Memories keynote lecture took place on
Friday, 8th November 2019 at 5pm
in the Project Room (1.06), 50 George Square, Edinburgh.
Professor Emeritus Jay Winter (Yale University)
presented a paper entitled
‘Silence as a language of memory: War, revolution and trauma, 1914-1924’.
This event was a collaboration between Connecting Memories and the
Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History (CSMCH),
the University of Edinburgh's leading centre for research
into the history of the modern world.
Prof Winter's talk was followed by a comment by Paul Leworthy and
a Q&A discussion chaired by CSMCH director, Dr Emile Chabal.
We are grateful both to the University of Edinburgh's
Department of European Literatures and Cultures (DELC)
and to the CMSCH for their support with this event.
The event poster and Prof Winter's abstract can be found below and a full audio recording of Prof Winter's talk can be heard on the CSMCH's Audiomack page here. Thanks to Dr Emile Chabal for making and editing the recording.
Not for the first time, all of the tickets on Eventbrite were reserved ahead of the event. The full house made for a great atmosphere. Thanks to everyone who came along!
Friday, 8th November 2019 at 5pm
in the Project Room (1.06), 50 George Square, Edinburgh.
Professor Emeritus Jay Winter (Yale University)
presented a paper entitled
‘Silence as a language of memory: War, revolution and trauma, 1914-1924’.
This event was a collaboration between Connecting Memories and the
Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History (CSMCH),
the University of Edinburgh's leading centre for research
into the history of the modern world.
Prof Winter's talk was followed by a comment by Paul Leworthy and
a Q&A discussion chaired by CSMCH director, Dr Emile Chabal.
We are grateful both to the University of Edinburgh's
Department of European Literatures and Cultures (DELC)
and to the CMSCH for their support with this event.
The event poster and Prof Winter's abstract can be found below and a full audio recording of Prof Winter's talk can be heard on the CSMCH's Audiomack page here. Thanks to Dr Emile Chabal for making and editing the recording.
Not for the first time, all of the tickets on Eventbrite were reserved ahead of the event. The full house made for a great atmosphere. Thanks to everyone who came along!
The poster for this event can be downloaded here:
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About Prof Jay Winter:
Jay Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. Focusing on World War I and its impact on the 20th century, Professor Jay Winter’s research has explored countless aspects of the relationships between history and memory as well as war and society. Before moving to Yale in 2001, Professor Winter taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Warwick, the University of Cambridge, and Columbia University, New York. He is the author or co-author of 25 books, including Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History; The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century; and most recently, War beyond words: Languages of remembrance from the Great War to the present. As well as editing or co-editing 30 books and contributing 130 book chapters to edited volumes, Prof Winter was co-producer, co-writer, and chief historian for the PBS/BBC series 'The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century'. | ||
Prof Winter's abstract:
Language frames memory. Words, images, photographs, films, sculptures, are all languages of memory. Each of these languages has its rules and its own history. Each frames memory, in that each enables us to construct, retrieve and express memory, and each limits what we can recall and what we can say about our recollections.
My claim is that silence is one such language of memory. I will develop this argument in the context of remembering the upheavals of the war decade 1914-24.
Silence frames war remembrance for many reasons. The most elementary is that the carnage caused by war touches on the sacred, and the sacred is one theatre of memory where silence is ubiquitous. But there are other domains of silence, in particular that of family memory, in which what is not said in daily life performs the underlying insults and injuries survivors of war and revolution carry with them for the rest of their lives.
This post was originally published 12th November 2019.
The first
Connecting Memories film screening
took place on
Friday, July 26th 2019 from 11am to 1pm
in the Screening Room (G.04), 50 George Square, Edinburgh.
We showed the film ‘Sacred Ground’ by Tim Gruenewald and Ludwig Schmidtpeter.
The film was introduced by Dr György Tóth (University of Stirling).
This event also provided us with
an opportunity to wish farewell to Dr Bárbara Fernández,
the co-founder of the Connecting Memories research initiative,
as she left Edinburgh to take up a post as
Assistant Professor in Latin American Studies at the
University of Hong Kong.
We are grateful to the University of Edinburgh's School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
for their generous support with this event.
The event poster, including information about the film, can be found below.
Thanks to everyone who came along. The film screening marked another first
for the Connecting Memories research initiative
and the event was another great success !
Connecting Memories film screening
took place on
Friday, July 26th 2019 from 11am to 1pm
in the Screening Room (G.04), 50 George Square, Edinburgh.
We showed the film ‘Sacred Ground’ by Tim Gruenewald and Ludwig Schmidtpeter.
The film was introduced by Dr György Tóth (University of Stirling).
This event also provided us with
an opportunity to wish farewell to Dr Bárbara Fernández,
the co-founder of the Connecting Memories research initiative,
as she left Edinburgh to take up a post as
Assistant Professor in Latin American Studies at the
University of Hong Kong.
We are grateful to the University of Edinburgh's School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
for their generous support with this event.
The event poster, including information about the film, can be found below.
Thanks to everyone who came along. The film screening marked another first
for the Connecting Memories research initiative
and the event was another great success !
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The poster for this event can be downloaded here:
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This post was originally published 1st August 2019.
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The
sixth Connecting Memories keynote lecture took place on Friday, May 10th 2019 at 5pm in the LLC Project Room (1.06), 50 George Square, Edinburgh. Professor Emeritus Sir Tom Devine (The University of Edinburgh) delivered a lecture entitled ‘Forgetting and Remembering: Black Slavery and the History of Scotland’. We are grateful to the University of Edinburgh's School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures for their generous support with this event. The event poster can be found below. Thanks to everyone who came along. The event was another great success! |
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The poster for this event can be downloaded here:
Professor Emeritus Sir Tom Devine
University of Edinburgh Kt, OBE, BA, PhD, DLitt, HonD Univ (Strathclyde, 2006), Hon DLitt (Queen's, Belfast, 2001), Hon DLitt (Abertay, Dundee, 2001), FRHistS, FSAScot, FRSE, Hon MRIA, FBA Across 32 books and around 100 academic articles Professor Sir Tom Devine’s research has covered innumerable aspects of the history of Scotland since c.1600 and its global connections and impact. He is the only historian knighted for 'services to the study of Scottish history' and the only UK historian elected to all three national academies within the British Isles. |
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This University of Edinburgh video features highlights from the 'Scotland's Past and Scotland's Present' event celeberating Professor Sir Tom Devine's career.
This post was originally published 13th May 2019.
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The fifth Connecting Memories keynote lecture took
place on Friday, 1st March 2019 at 6pm in the Project Room (1.06), 50 George Square, Edinburgh. Dr Anne Whitehead (Newcastle University) delivered a lecture entitled ‘Past Imperfect: A Memoir That Is Ongoing.’ The abstract for the paper and event poster can be found below. We are grateful to the University of Edinburgh's Department of European Literatures and Cultures (DELC) for their support with this event. Thanks to everyone who came along. The event was another great success! |
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The poster for this event can be downloaded here:
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Dr Whitehead's abstract:
Past Imperfect: A Memoir That Is Ongoing In her essay ‘Points of Departure’, which reflects on the writing of her own memoir, Jill Ker Conway concludes: ‘I think you have to be at least twenty years away from what you write about to have the necessary detachment. Many memoirs or autobiographies get very cluttered in their later chapters because people don’t know what was really involved. It takes more time to know what the shape of your life has been like’. This seems sage advice, even if it assumes that there will be at least twenty years remaining after any given experience. It also takes for granted that time will bring detachment, and that detachment is necessary. Do we already know what the shape of our lives has been, or does the act of writing itself help to shape and form the life, or alternatively to reveal that life will resist such narrative moulding and shaping? In this paper, I reflect on my own tentative, uncertain, and incomplete venture into memoir. Along the way I want to take the opportunity to think about why I am drawn to the genre in the first place, what it might mean as an academic to write in a more personal voice, and what I have experienced so far in the writing process. | ||
This post was originally published 4th March 2019.
The fourth Connecting Memories keynote lecture took place on
Friday, 30th November 2018 at 5.30pm
in 50 George Square (G.01), Edinburgh.
Dr Alicia Salomone (University of Chile)
delivered a lecture entitled
‘Transgenerational memories in artworks by children and grandchildren of victims of Pinochet’s dictatorship.’
The abstract for the paper and event poster can be found below.
We are grateful to the University of Edinburgh's Department of European Literatures and Cultures (DELC) and Centre for Contemporary Latin American Studies (CCLAS) for their support with this event.
Thanks to all those who participated. The event was another great success!
Friday, 30th November 2018 at 5.30pm
in 50 George Square (G.01), Edinburgh.
Dr Alicia Salomone (University of Chile)
delivered a lecture entitled
‘Transgenerational memories in artworks by children and grandchildren of victims of Pinochet’s dictatorship.’
The abstract for the paper and event poster can be found below.
We are grateful to the University of Edinburgh's Department of European Literatures and Cultures (DELC) and Centre for Contemporary Latin American Studies (CCLAS) for their support with this event.
Thanks to all those who participated. The event was another great success!
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Photos from Dr Salomone's keynote lecture. 
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Dr Salomone's abstract:
After 45 years since the beginning of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, there is an emergence of new social agents within the memory realm, aiming to install their own discourses and struggles for memory. They are the children and grandchildren of the dictatorship’s victims, who were born and grew up after the coup d’état in 1973, or during the democratic transition inaugurated in 1990. As members of families that were opponents to the regime, they share common memories regarding that period. The tracks of those difficult experiences can be followed through a number of cultural productions by contemporary Chilean artists, which are focused on the recovery of individual and social memories. Furthermore, these memories also express the way in which the transference of social memories takes place among different generations, and how those memories are processed or mediated by artistic means. In this frame, my research interest is to analyse the representation of transgenerational memories in pieces of artwork by taking into account their topics and ideological discourses, as well as the formal resources that are applied to the works and their poetics. Accordingly, the lecture’s aim is to present a general overview of this project, including a description of the corpus under study, the analytical perspectives that guide the research, and the provisional results achieved so far. |
Poster for the next Connecting Memory keynote lecture. It will be the first of the 2018/19 academic year and the initiative's fourth so far.
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This post was originally published 1st November 2018.
The 1st Annual Symposium of the Connecting Memories Research Initiative
took place on Friday, 1st June 2018
in Room G.05, 50 George Square, Edinburgh.
A summary of the event written for the IMLR blog can be viewed here. It is also reproduced below.
After an incredible response to our CfP,
the event proved to be a fascinating and productive
exploration of interdisciplinary perspectives relating to memory.
At the heart of the event were
two roundtable discussions, incorporating more than ten ‘micro-presentations’,
and a keynote lecture by Professor Andrew Hoskins.
There were also extensive opportunities for networking and discussion throughout the day.
took place on Friday, 1st June 2018
in Room G.05, 50 George Square, Edinburgh.
A summary of the event written for the IMLR blog can be viewed here. It is also reproduced below.
After an incredible response to our CfP,
the event proved to be a fascinating and productive
exploration of interdisciplinary perspectives relating to memory.
At the heart of the event were
two roundtable discussions, incorporating more than ten ‘micro-presentations’,
and a keynote lecture by Professor Andrew Hoskins.
There were also extensive opportunities for networking and discussion throughout the day.
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While further information about the roundtable sessions and the keynote lecture as well as the day's timetable are detailed in the symposium programme, a more comprehensive account of the symposium follows below the event photographs.
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Professor Andrew Hoskins's keynote lecture.
The first round-table session.
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Photos from the Connecting Memories Symposium.
The second round-table session.
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Participants in conversation during the lunch-break.
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Paul Leworthy's welcome and introduction.
Connecting Memories Symposium
University of Edinburgh
Friday 1st June 2018
The Connecting Memories symposium took place on Friday 1stJune 2018 in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Funded by the IMLR, the symposium was part of the Connecting Memories Research Initiative’s ongoing efforts to develop links between scholars working on different aspects of memory and to establish a network of researchers working on memory in the UK, especially in Scotland and the North of England.
The main aim of the symposium was to bring scholars from various institutions and disciplines together in order to create a dialogue between them about their different perspectives on memory. To that end, the event was composed of two round table panels and a keynote lecture. In the round table sessions, each of the speakers gave a 5-minute micro-presentation on some insight or methodological point relating to their own research. After the presentations, the chair took questions from the audience and initiated discussions between panellists, seeking to draw out the connections and disconnects between the presentations and the perspectives on memory voiced in them.
Delegates included scholars working in the fields of English literature, Chinese studies, French and Francophone studies, German studies, Spanish and Latin American studies as well as anthropology, history, heritage, sociology and political science. While most participants hailed from the humanities and social sciences, we also had delegates from disciplines including neuroscience, psychology and computer science. Attendees hailed from more than 15 different institutions across the UK. The Scottish universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Strathclyde, Stirling and St Andrews as well as Edinburgh Napier University and the University of the Highlands and Islands were all represented. Universities in the North of England were represented by attendees from Newcastle and York St John. Other speakers travelled from the universities of Cambridge, Cardiff and Brighton. Speakers included postgraduate students, ECRs and established academics.
The symposium opened with a welcome speech by Paul Leworthy. In the round table sessions, we heard fascinating micro-presentations on a variety of subjects, all of which were admirably packed with information and insights despite the restrictive 5-minute time limit. Adeptly chaired by Dr Claire Boyle and Dr Simon Cooke (both University of Edinburgh) and propelled by incisive audience questions, the discussion sessions traced some of the connections and contradictions that obtain between different approaches to studying memory.
The role of spatial, social and cultural schemata was a key node around which contributions clustered, with interventions from scientists, social scientists and cultural critics each casting the others’ into sharper relief. The cultural framing of the past was considered in terms of narratives, nations and – often at the interface of the two – translations. Cautionary, critical and more optimistic positions were all defended as different forms of external memory resources were discussed. Positing memory as a present performance of the past, questions were asked on the one hand about the socio-political opportunities memory offers and on the other about the responsibilities it entails.
The day was rounded off by a captivating keynote lecture by Professor Andrew Hoskins (University of Glasgow) in which he drew on his research in digital memory studies to argue for a recalibration of the study of memory such that it affords adequate status to forgetting. The three main sessions were interspersed with opportunities for delegates to pursue conversations and enquiries sparked in the discussion sessions. Connections continued to be made in lively discussions during the drinks reception at Harry’s Bar after the symposium.
Participants praised the format of the symposium and the breadth of the research perspectives it brought together. Delegates described how the event encouraged unexpected conversations and provided plenty of time and space for those talks to take place. The exposure the event offered to aspects of memory that individuals hadn’t encountered in the course of their own research was equally popular.
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This text was first published on the IMLR's Living Languages blog (here).
We are grateful to the Institute for Modern Languages Research (IMLR) for sponsoring the
Connecting Memories symposium.
University of Edinburgh
Friday 1st June 2018
The Connecting Memories symposium took place on Friday 1stJune 2018 in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Funded by the IMLR, the symposium was part of the Connecting Memories Research Initiative’s ongoing efforts to develop links between scholars working on different aspects of memory and to establish a network of researchers working on memory in the UK, especially in Scotland and the North of England.
The main aim of the symposium was to bring scholars from various institutions and disciplines together in order to create a dialogue between them about their different perspectives on memory. To that end, the event was composed of two round table panels and a keynote lecture. In the round table sessions, each of the speakers gave a 5-minute micro-presentation on some insight or methodological point relating to their own research. After the presentations, the chair took questions from the audience and initiated discussions between panellists, seeking to draw out the connections and disconnects between the presentations and the perspectives on memory voiced in them.
Delegates included scholars working in the fields of English literature, Chinese studies, French and Francophone studies, German studies, Spanish and Latin American studies as well as anthropology, history, heritage, sociology and political science. While most participants hailed from the humanities and social sciences, we also had delegates from disciplines including neuroscience, psychology and computer science. Attendees hailed from more than 15 different institutions across the UK. The Scottish universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Strathclyde, Stirling and St Andrews as well as Edinburgh Napier University and the University of the Highlands and Islands were all represented. Universities in the North of England were represented by attendees from Newcastle and York St John. Other speakers travelled from the universities of Cambridge, Cardiff and Brighton. Speakers included postgraduate students, ECRs and established academics.
The symposium opened with a welcome speech by Paul Leworthy. In the round table sessions, we heard fascinating micro-presentations on a variety of subjects, all of which were admirably packed with information and insights despite the restrictive 5-minute time limit. Adeptly chaired by Dr Claire Boyle and Dr Simon Cooke (both University of Edinburgh) and propelled by incisive audience questions, the discussion sessions traced some of the connections and contradictions that obtain between different approaches to studying memory.
The role of spatial, social and cultural schemata was a key node around which contributions clustered, with interventions from scientists, social scientists and cultural critics each casting the others’ into sharper relief. The cultural framing of the past was considered in terms of narratives, nations and – often at the interface of the two – translations. Cautionary, critical and more optimistic positions were all defended as different forms of external memory resources were discussed. Positing memory as a present performance of the past, questions were asked on the one hand about the socio-political opportunities memory offers and on the other about the responsibilities it entails.
The day was rounded off by a captivating keynote lecture by Professor Andrew Hoskins (University of Glasgow) in which he drew on his research in digital memory studies to argue for a recalibration of the study of memory such that it affords adequate status to forgetting. The three main sessions were interspersed with opportunities for delegates to pursue conversations and enquiries sparked in the discussion sessions. Connections continued to be made in lively discussions during the drinks reception at Harry’s Bar after the symposium.
Participants praised the format of the symposium and the breadth of the research perspectives it brought together. Delegates described how the event encouraged unexpected conversations and provided plenty of time and space for those talks to take place. The exposure the event offered to aspects of memory that individuals hadn’t encountered in the course of their own research was equally popular.
***
This text was first published on the IMLR's Living Languages blog (here).
We are grateful to the Institute for Modern Languages Research (IMLR) for sponsoring the
Connecting Memories symposium.
This post was originally published 15th August 2018.
The second Connecting Memories keynote lecture took place on
Friday, April 13th 2018 at 6pm
in the LLC Project Room, 50 George Square (1.06), Edinburgh.
Prof Richard Morris (The University of Edinburgh) delivered a lecture entitled
‘The making, keeping and losing of memory’.
The abstract for the paper and event poster can be found below.
Thanks to all those who participated. The event was another great success!
Friday, April 13th 2018 at 6pm
in the LLC Project Room, 50 George Square (1.06), Edinburgh.
Prof Richard Morris (The University of Edinburgh) delivered a lecture entitled
‘The making, keeping and losing of memory’.
The abstract for the paper and event poster can be found below.
Thanks to all those who participated. The event was another great success!
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Photos from Professor Morris's keynote lecture. 
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Invitation to the second Connecting Memory keynote lecture.
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Prof Morris's abstract:
Memory is central to our life and identity. Our brains make memory traces automatically as we go about our daily life. We also forget a lot - it’s natural. Automaticity, achieved by changes in the synaptic connections between memory processing cells in the brain, ensures that the system does not have to ‘decide’ in an instant what to keep and what to lose. The risk of the system becoming ‘saturated’ with too much information is avoided because forgetting serves the essential subtractive function of keeping things within range. But what memories get kept and which are lost? Novelty guides the selection of what the brain keeps; we not only remember surprising things, but also events that happen around the time of surprise. Of what is left at the end of the day, the brain consolidates what most interests us during sleep. That is, it fixes what fits best with our existing knowledge, and this fixing process opens up the opportunity for memories to be changed such that we the remember things that, in practice, never happened. The assimilation of the new with the old means that - paradoxically - familiarity matters too. Finally, there is loss. Some of it is benign, the so-called “seven sins of memory”. More extensive problems in the capacity to remember and the experience of accelerated forgetting can, of course, become a major problem in Alzheimer’s Disease, and other age-related brain disorders, and this appears to happen due a breakdown of the very cells in the brain that mediate normal memory. |
This post was originally published 20th April 2018.
The first Connecting Memories keynote lecture took place on
Friday, December 1st 2017 at 5pm
in Room G.06, 50 George Square, Edinburgh.
Prof Gustavo San Román (The University of St Andrews) delivered a lecture entitled
‘The Purple Land of Memory and Identity: Three Instances of Memorialization in Three Literary Texts’.
The abstract for the paper and event poster can be found below.
Thanks to all those who participated. The event was another great success!
Professor San Román's keynote lecture.
Invitation to the first Connecting Memory keynote lecture.
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Professor San Román's abstract: My talk will be about Uruguay, dubbed The Purple Land in 1885 by an Anglo-Argentine writer, W. H. Hudson, who saw it as a third and desired space, without the restraints of both his native country (the Argentinian pampas) and his adopted one (Victorian London). I shall consider three instances of memorialization or memorising, in three literary texts. One is by the Scottish adventurer, politician and writer, Robert Cunninghame Graham; the second is by the distinguished intellectual and wordsmith, Jorge Luis Borges; the third, by a Uruguayan of Galician parents, the great critic Ángel Rama. Each deals with a different kind of memory which is in its own way hybridised, imagined and problematic; and all of them ultimately engage with personal and collective identity. |
This post was originally published 2nd December 2017.
The Connecting Memories launch event took place on
Friday, November 3rd 2017 at 5pm
in Room G.05, 50 George Square, Edinburgh.
Thanks to all those who participated. It was a great success!
We enjoyed the lively group discussions and gathered a lot of ideas for round-table sessions in the new year.
Additionally, the event offered the first of many important opportunities for networking and trustbuilding.
Special thanks to those who travelled from Glasgow and Stirling.
Below is a selection of photos from the event.
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This post was originally published 10th November 2017.
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