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Dynamics
of Memories is an interdisciplinary group based at Lancaster. It has
established links with scholars and grass-roots institutions
in the UK, Austria, Ireland, France, Sweden, Estonia, Spain, Bangladesh, the USA and
New Zealand.
Our group seeks to investigate how cultural and historical memories express a struggle for power in the present. Our main collective aim is to bring together the wide spectrum of chronological, geographical and disciplinary areas of expertise covered by its members, which include studies of medieval religious orders, retroactive attitudes towards the Third Reich, Chile's dictatorship, and the wars in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Spain and Algeria.
By comparing our case studies and debating our methodologies we seek to develop individual and collective approaches to memory that can further our insights into the processes we analyse.
Dynamics of Memories aims to assess how individuals and social groupings reify hegemonic narratives about the past by scrutinising the ways in which collective and social memory become synonyms for national, regional or local identities. In order to investigate how societies construct 'lieux de mémoire' which mediate their cultural myths, we address the subject of Memory Studies from an inter-disciplinary and post-national perspective .
Memory, like history and culture, should be treated in the plural as the site of a struggle about what to remember (and therefore what to forget). It is, furthermore, a complex and dynamic activity that enables individuals and societies to interpret the past in a way that is meaningful to the present.
News: AHRC Research Networking Award
Dynamics of Memories has been awarded a £24,859 Research Networking Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their work on 'Battlegrounds of Memory and Justice'.
