The Future of Memory Studies

Seminar with Ann Rigney, Utrecht University and Joanna Wawrzyniak, University of Warsaw.

Guest speakers

Ann Rigney is professor emerita of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University and one of the most prominent scholars the field of cultural memory studies. Her many publications focus on the intersections between narrative, collective identity, and competing interpretations of the past. Her most recent monograph Remembering Hope: The Cultural Afterlife of Protest (Oxford UP, 2025) examines how protest is culturally remembered and develops the idea of remembrance as a form of resistance. It was one of the outcomes of her ERC-advanced grant on Remembering Activism (2019-2024).

Joanna Wawrzyniak is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Research on Social Memory, University of Warsaw. She has ha long standing expertise in oral history and museum research and she has been the leader of Work Packages in Horizon 2020 projects, ECHOES and DisTerrMem.  She has published, among others, in Heritage and Society; Memory Studies; Contemporary European History; East European Politics and Societies; and Polish Sociological Review. Her most recent co-authored book in Polish Cięcia. Mówiona historia transformacji (2020) won an award of POLITYKA weekly for the best historical book of 2020.

Moderator

Barbara Törnquist-Plewa is a professor of Eastern and Central European Studies at Lund University. Her main research interests are memory, identity and nationalism. 2012-2016 she was the leader of the EU’s COST-action “In Search for Transcultural Memory in Europe.” She has worked with many research projects, recently as the WP-leader in the Horizon Europe Widera project EUROPAST. She has published several books and many articles, among others, in History and Memory, International Journal of Heritage Studies; Memory Studies and East European Politics and Societies.