CMSI Featured Member: Stefano Bellin

Conference report to "New Directions and Challenges in Cultural Memory Studies: Past, Present, Future", 14-15 June 2016, at the GCSC, Justus-Liebig University Gießen

De Gruyter eBooks, 2008

Over the past two decades, the relationship between culture and memory has emerged in many parts of the world as a key issue of interdisciplinary research, involving fields as diverse as history, sociology, art, literary and media studies, philosophy, theology, psychology, and the neurosciences, and thus bringing tagether the humanities, social studies, and the natural sciences in a unique way. The importance of the nation of cultural mem ory is not only documented by the rapid growth, since the late 1980s, of publications on specific national, social, religious, or family memories, but also by a more recent trend, namely attempts to provide overviews of the state of the art in this emerging field and to synthesize different research traditions. Anthologies of theoretical texts, such as The Collective Memory Reader (Olick et al.), as weil as the launch of the new journal Memory Studies testify to the need to bring focus to this broad discussion and to consider the theoretical and methodological standards of a promising, but also as yet incoherent and dispersed field (cf. Olick; Radstone; Erll). The present handbook represents the shared effort of forty-one authors, all of whom have contributed over the past years, from a variety of disciplinary per spectives, to the development of this nascent field, and it is part of the effort to consolidate memory studies into a more coherent discipline. It is a first step on the road towards a conceptual foundation for the kind of memory studies which assumes a decidedly cultural and social perspective. "Cultural" (ar, if you will, "collective," "social") memory is certainly a multifarious nation, a term often used in an ambiguous and vague way. Media, practices, and structures as diverse as myth, monuments, historiog raphy, ritual, conversational rememberihg, configurations of cultural knowledge, and neuronal networks are nowadays subsumed under this wide umbrella term. Because of its intricacy, cultural memory has been a highly controversial issue ever since its very conception in Maurice Halbwachs's studies on memoire collective (esp. 1925, 1941, 1950). His con temporary Marc Bloch accused Halbwachs of simply transferring concepts from individual psychology to the level of the collective, and even today scholars continue to challenge the nation of collective or cultural memory, c1ai.ming, for example, that since we have well-established concepts like "myth," "tradition," and "individual memory," there is no need for a

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

Ethnologia Fennica, 2022

The theme of this Ethnologia Fennica 2022 issue (vol. 49:1) is the shaping and representing of individual lives and memories in the context of heritage and heritagisation. Today, heritage and cultural institutions such as museums and archives are well aware of their social and political role and strive to increase ecological, cultural, and social sustainability (e.g., Gardner & Hamilton eds. 2017; Janes & Sandell 2019). Therefore, they constantly seek more democratic practices with respect to how people and communities are represented and by whom. One way of achieving these objectives is to increase the use of oral history and life writings in public history activities. Public history, especially in the Nordic context, is connected to earlier traditions such as labor history, social history, and "history from below" (e.g., Ashton & Trapeznik eds. 2019). In recent years, there has been a growing interest in personal heritage. In tourism studies, for instance, personal or mundane heritage has become a part of a tourist experience where people visit sites that have personal memory or particular family significance (Prince 2021, 20). In addition to national and transnational heritage, the interest in personal heritage and memories is seen as important and appealing. Besides tourism, this can be seen in different heritage and cultural institutions like museums. The idea for this theme issue emerged from the project "Paimio Sanatorium: Social, Historical and Cultural Perspectives" at the University of Turku. In the commentary text of this issue Anne Heimo describes the multidimensional situation of the heritagisation of the sanatorium and the possibilities to utilize personal memories in the research, but also in displays and other public activities in the place that can be described as a dark heritage site. In our themed call "Heritage and Personal Memories" we asked for articles discussing various ways of using oral history and personal memories in public history activities and participatory processes. We were interested in how applied ethnographic work and ethnological research affect these activities.

The volume opens with a short report of the activities of the action delivered by the chair at the final conference of ISTME in Dublin 1-3 September 2016. It is followed by a selection of papers presented at the action's conferences and workshops (see the report in this volume). Most papers written by the action participants have been aimed for one of the five publications (two collected volumes and three special issues of scientific journals) prepared by the action or became included in other academic publications. However, several papers were published electronically on the action's website, and it is a sample of those publications that are featured in this volume. The concluding chapter constitutes an attempt to look ahead and reflect over current and possible future directions in Memory Studies. It emerged in connection to the conference " Thinking through the future of Memory " , 3-5 December 2016, inaugurating the Memory Studies Association, which was initiated by a group of participants in our COST Action.

The PhD in History and Archaeology covers many research fields - anthropology, archaeology, oriental studies, history and other intercultural connections - from prehistory to modern times. They follow an interdisciplinary dimension and different methodologies, focusing on the construction and intersection of individual and collective memories as a way to represent, express and transmit experience and practice. Pluri-disciplinarity is therefore the main feature of the Program. The PhD aims to form scholars able to play high qualified roles in the Universities, in scientific and cultural institutions, in the private sector, in preserving, safeguarding and promoting the territory and its historical heritage, both in public and private, by processing and interpreting historical sources and archaeological materials.