Practicing Memory after Collective Violence

Our group approaches the memory of collective violence as social, cultural, and communicative practice. Memory is treated as an activity, in need of attention and analysis, which produces and disseminates knowledge about the past and promotes values.

We are a group of interdisciplinary scholars, representing sociolinguistics, history, psychology, media and communication studies, political science, performing arts, literary studies, and sociology, who study how memory of collective violence is practiced. We examine concrete localized contexts such as educational programs, visits to museums and sites of destruction, reading groups, and social media platforms.

We are concerned with describing the on the ground work of interpretation and interaction in which the memory of collective violence is performed. We investigate how persons interact with the social, material, and technological spaces where memory of collective violence is formed, the affordances for social action that such spaces enable or constrain, how meanings circulate intertextually, and their consequences and effects beyond mnemonic meanings per se.

Events

Memory Politics after Mass Violence by Timothy Williams

Online Book Launch

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.

Group Members

Alexandra Georgakopoulou

Key aspects of activity

  • She has developed small stories research, a paradigm for the analysis of everyday life storytelling and identities, with a current focus on storytelling as curated communication on social media.
  • She has (co)-authored & edited 17 books of which the latest volume is: Influencer discourse: Affective relations & identities’ (2024; co-ed. with Pilar Blitvich, John Benjamins). She is currently completing a monograph with Anna De Fina entitled “Analyzing narrative online’ (forthcoming. Routledge). She is the Co-Editor of the Routledge Research in Narrative, Interaction & Discourse Series.

Publications (2024-2025):

Georgakopoulou, A. (2024a) Reconfiguring and repurposing authenticity: Influencers and formatted stories on Instagram during the pandemic. In P. Blitvich & Georgakopoulou, A. (eds.). Influencer discourse. Affective relations and identities. John Benjamins. 20-42.

Georgakopoulou, A. (2024b) In search of context online: Technography as a synergetic methodology for the study of stories. Discourse, Context & Media 61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100801

Georgakopoulou, A. (in press) From ‘being real’ to ‘relatable tales’: Formatted authenticity and stories in TikTok short form videos. Narrative Works.

Hanna Meretoja

Key aspects of activity

  • Her focus areas are narrative studies; cultural memory studies; philosophical and narrative hermeneutics; perpetrator fiction; reading group research; narrative agency and ethics.
  • Her work brings together cultural memory studies and narrative studies, seeing both narrative and memory as practices of interpretation. I have worked on Holocaust fiction and perpetrator fiction, and am currently doing research on the potential of reading groups to enhance narrative agency.

Publications (2024 - 2025)

Meretoja, Hanna: “On Rereading: Revisiting Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones”. – Colin Davis (ed), Hermeneutics, Ethics, Narrative. Oslo: Novus, 2025, pp. 129-145.

Meretoja, Hanna: “Literature as an Exploration of Past Worlds as Spaces of Possibility: Herta Müller’s Atemschaukel (The Hunger Angel).” – Eneken Laanes et al. (eds), Mnemonic Migration. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2025.

Meretoja, Hanna: “History of Experience, Implicit Narratives, and a Sense of the Possible.” Cultural History 2024 (Online Supplement), 52–73. https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2024.0319

Chaim Noy

  • Professor at Bar-Ilan University, Israel
  • Web page: www.chaimnoy.com
  • Mail: chaim.noyatbiu.ac.il

Key aspects of activity

  • research examines heritage, memorial, and dark history museums, with a focus on the museum-audience interaction. Mostly, his studies examine audiences’ remediation and re-narrativization of museums that mediate conflicted histories. This is pursued through examining various reviewing and commenting platforms/media, from visitor/comment books located inside museums, to Google Maps’ review platform. His recent research appeared in Visitor Studies, Studies in Travel Writing, New Media & Society, Narrative Inquiry, Journal of Sociolinguistics, and Language in Society.
  • Key disciplines: media and communication studies, language and social interaction, ethnography, linguistic anthropology, critical discourse studies, museums studies, genocide and memory studies, activism.

Constance Pâris de Bollardière

  • A historian and the assistant director of the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention at The American University of Paris.
  • Web page : https://www.aup.edu/profile/cparisdebollardiere

Key aspects of activity

  • reconstruction of Jewish life after the Holocaust and on Holocaust survivor testimonies. Among her research projects, she explores the emergence of video collections of Holocaust survivor interviews and the civic goals these archives wanted to achieve.

Per Roar

Key aspects of activity

  • Per Roar’s artistic research in choreography and dance, driven by his interest in the politics and affective power of memory, is informed by somatic practices, (auto-) ethnography, sociological and historical perspectives, and performance studies.

Per Roar works with artistic research and choreographic approaches that socially and politically question and explore ways to embody and artistically address memory- and trauma cultures, including Holocaust memory

Brian Schiff

  • Esmond Nissim Professor of Psychology and Director of the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention.
  • Web page : https://www.aup.edu/profile/bschiff

Key aspects of activity:

  • Quantitative and qualitative research on the relationship between Holocaust knowledge or education and values. In collaboration with Constance Pâris de Bollardière and Kira Winter, I am conducting a review of the quantitative literature published in English on this subject.
  • Areas of research: Narrative psychology; cultural psychology; hermeneutics; conversation analysis; Holocaust testimony.

Publications:

Schiff, B. (2003). Memory is an interpretive action. Narrative Inquiry. 33(2), 269-287.

Schiff, B. (In press). Talk about the past. Memory Studies.

Schiff, B. (In press). Reconsidering collective memory: Shared meaning as collaborative narration. In A. Erll & W. Hirst (Eds.). Breaking down the silos: Memory between cognition, culture, and political momentum.

Thomas Van de Putte

Key aspects of activity

  • Thomas works on questions of cultural and collective Holocaust memory, combining perspectives from sociology, linguistics and cultural studies.
  • Thomas’ current research on interactions between academic Holocaust historians and laypeople is informed by the discussions in the Memory Practices Network

Timothy Williams

 

Key aspects of activity

  • Timothy’s research interests are comparative approaches to the politics of memory, anti-Roma discrimination and resilience, violence dynamics and perpetrators and digital dynamics of violence.
  • Timothy’s political science lens helps him engage with memory as practices of power and firmly rooted in social relations in the present. With expertise from Cambodia, Indonesia, Rwanda, Namibia and Germany he brings a comparative perspective to the research group that embeds discussions of the Holocaust in broader discussions on the politics of memory.