Online Book Launch: Memory Politics after Mass Violence by Timothy Williams

This event is organized by the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention at The American University of Paris and by Practicing Memory after Collective Violence, a collaborative scholarly working group. Timothy Williams, a member of the working group, will present his new book, Memory Politics after Mass Violence  (2025, Bristol University Press). Following an opening short presentation by Timothy, members of Practicing Memory after Collective Violence, including Alexandra Georgakopoulou, Hanna Meretoja, Chaim Noy, Constance Pâris de Bollardière, Per Roar, Brian Schiff and Thomas Van de Putte will give short reflections and comments on the book, and open the floor for a discussion between the audience and the author.

Memory Politics after Mass Violence explores how the memory of violent pasts are used in post-violence societies to generate political power and legitimacy in the present. In particular, the book argues that the core element of memory for power and legitimacy is how individual roles and responsibility are attributed regarding the violent past: who is remembered as a perpetrator, who assigned the role of victim, who is celebrated as a hero? How these roles are attributed and any ambivalences that surround this process is key to how the past is remembered and how it unfolds an impact today. 

The book demonstrates how these processes become visible in the memoryscape as a materially and socially constituted space in which various collective and individual memories coexist, compete, and coalesce to render the past significant in the present. The memoryscape is constituted by a vast array of material sites and objects, embodied practices, narratives and discourses and cultural heritage that interact with each other in creating meaning of the past. 

This book presents one of the first comparative approaches to understanding the politics of memory in post-violence societies and explores the core concepts of mnemonic role attributions and ambivalences more deeply through three case studies that draw on in-depth fieldwork: Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge genocide from 1975-1979, Rwanda since the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, and Indonesia since the genocide against communists in 1965/1966.

Timothy Williams is a Junior Professor of Insecurity and Social Order and Chairman of the interdisciplinary research centre RISK at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, as well as Vice President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Timothy is the author of the books Memory Politics after Mass Violence. Attributing Roles in the Memoryscape (2025, Bristol UP), The Complexity of Evil. Perpetration and Genocide (2021, Rutgers UP), and co-author of Peace and the Politics of Memory (with Johanna Mannergren, Annika Björkdahl, Susanne Buckley-Zistel and Stefanie Kappler, 2024, Manchester UP).

Please register by October the 4th on the form below in order to receive the link for the event