Postgraduate Workshop: sites of memory

How is memory related to physical space, objects and texts? How do different disciplines conceptualise memory? How do we research and write about memory?

“Sites of Memory” is an interdisciplinary postgraduate conference and interactive workshop that will feature presentations by undergraduates, postgraduates and early career scholars working on memory across the disciplines. Running as the first in a series of three workshops based within the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham, this session seeks to provide an informal and hands-on environment where the subject of memory can be discussed in the broadest possible sense.

The first part of the conference will include papers focused on memory in different disciplines and regions. This will be followed by an interactive workshop exploring how different ‘sites’ stimulate, document and dissemble memory. Presented with a case study in which past objects and events are remembered in multiple ways, participants will discuss issues related to the processes of remembering and commemoration.

Papers will focus primarily on the physicality of memory and its relationship to space, place, objects, texts and bodies.