Can memorials heal the wounds?

All images by Ana Milošević   By Ana Milošević, a researcher at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium, affiliated with the Faculty of Social Sciences and the LINES Institute (Leuven International and European Studies).   In 2014, the Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg won a competition for a memorial to the victims of the Utøya …

The international spread of state interventionism in history and historical memory

Cover picture: Lyon Armenian Genocide Memorial was erected in 2006 in central Lyon, France. It was designed by Leonardo Basmadyian and includes 36 white concrete pieces supported by stones from Armenia. Poems of Kostan Zarian are written on the concrete pieces | EUROM By Georges Mink, senior researcher emeritus at the Institut des Sciences Sociales …

European Remembrance Policies

Picture: Plenary hall of European parliament in Strasbourg, April 16, 2013 | Ikars, Shutterstock.com   By Markus J. Prutsch, Fellow of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the University of Heidelberg, leader of the international research project Science, Numbers and Politics   Introduction One of the most powerful tools in welding political identity is …

“Citizens’ engagement is at the core of the Europe for Citizens programme”

Picture: Johan François © European Commission EACEA.   Interview to Gilles Pelayo, Head of Unit of the programme Europe for Citizens, Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA)   What is the specific role of the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency?   The European Commission delegates the management of some EU programmes to Executives …

About the complexity of the past

Interview with Enzo Traverso, Cornell University. The historian Enzo Traverso, a professor at the Cornell University (USA), is one of the most distinguished specialists in memory studies. In the following pages he answers a series of questions focusing on the memory of the perpetrators and their legacies, the current rise of new far-right movements and …

Once victors, now victims. How do the Argentine military remember their recent past?

Picture: Operativo Independencia, to dismantle the ERP. Tucumán, Argentina (1975) | Public domain By Valentina Salvi, an assistant researcher at CIS-CONICET / IDES. Associate Professor of Social Theory “Georg Simmel” of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and of Sociology of Culture of the Department of Art and Culture of the …

Issue #2: Editorial

Cover picture: View from the bedroom, Hospedería Santa Cruz, Valley of the Fallen (Cuelgamuros) | Silvia Marimon, 2018. By Jordi Guixé, director of the European Observatory on Memories (EUROM) of the University of Barcelona’s Solidarity Foundation A year ago we published the first issue of Observing Memories, a digital magazine that aimed to offer a …

The one who sows wind, reaps storms. Validity of the Damnatio memoriae

Picture: Detail of the penitentiary file of Celestino García Moreno, peasant of Morata de Tajuña, shot on June 14, 1939, in the walls of the East Madrid cemetery | quieneseran.blogspot By Fernando Hernández Holgado, associate professor at the Department of Contemporary History of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid   A historical note Madrid was one …