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Memories in Transit

The Memory Studies Association is a professional association for Memory Studies scholars, as well as those who are active in museums, memorial institutions, archives, the arts and other fields engaged in remembrance. The objective is to become the most important forum for the memory field – both through an annual, international and interdisciplinary conference and through a strong online presence. The first conference took place in Amsterdam in 2016. 

The Memory Studies Association (MSA) welcomes proposals for its eighth annual conference, to be held in person from 18 to 20 July 2024 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima, Peru.

The theme of the 2024 conference will be “Memories in Transit”. People build memories that transition between places, spaces, groups, generations, and temporalities; between social struggles, political processes, and identities; via various repertoires and in different media formats. Memories in Transit is an invitation to reflect on the itineraries of these memories, their heterogeneity, and permanent transformations. As memories circulate between people and places, they are implicated in many social phenomena including processes of inequality, racism, exclusion, and migration. On the one hand, memories help sustain various forms of violence and authoritarianism. On the other hand, memories represent an important resource in the fight against injustices.

We live in times of intense mobility caused by natural disasters, globalization, forced displacements, dispossession of territories, violence, and climate change. Mobility shapes contemporary societies, setting in motion memories that travel in oral, gestural, sonic, sensory, textual, or digital formats. Mobility produces new repertoires of meaning including forgetfulness, denial, and oblivion. How much of the past is reflected in new transmedia spaces? How do past events take shape in the present? How much does it change? How do we talk about truth in an era of fake news? Memories in Transit is also an invitation to think about the return of phenomena we believed to have overcome (think about “Nunca Más” in the Southern Cone), such as populism, authoritarianism, and systematic violations of human rights that haunt societies, erode democracies and which are now prevalent in our countries.

The conference will take place at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, which is located in the city of Lima in Peru. A Cultural Program of events will run alongside the academic program, where we will be cooperating closely with local memory activists, cultural partners, artists, and heritage sites.

We will be structuring the conference around 12 central interconnected thematic streams, identified as core areas of work within the broader conference theme of “Memories in Transit”. The thematic strands may be interpreted widely and are intended to encompass as diverse a historical, geographical, social, and cultural range as possible. We invite panels in English and in Spanish.

We therefore invite submissions connected to the following streams:

1. Mobility, migration, and refugees

2. Memory, activism, and social justice

3. Transitional Justice and public policies of memory

4. Conflict, violence, and memory

5. Populism, neopopulism, neoconservatism, and negationism

6. Indigenous and afro-descendant peoples and their memories

7. Memories of feminisms and sexual dissidences

8. Memory and the environment

9. Memory and diverse belongings

10. Memoryscapes (digital, places, imagined)

11. Creative approaches to memory and embodiment

12. The coloniality and decolonising of memory

We will also consider other topics of interest to the members of the Memory Studies Association.

Important Dates

22/01 -  Deadline for submissions 

15/02  - Letters of Acceptance 

12/04 - 26/05 - Registration 

31/05 - Program draft 

30/06 - Final program 

17/07 - Pre-Conference activities at PUCP 

18/07-20/07  - The 8th Annual Conference of the MSA 

Visit the MSA website, and follow our Facebook and Twitter for up-to-date information about the MSA.

Please send enquiries about the conference to conference@memorystudiesassociation.org.

For MSA-related matters (including membership fees), please contact us at info@memorystudiesassociation.org.