Event Diaspora Memories and the Virtual Museum: Remembering Lost Homelands
Tuesday, 8 February 2022 13:15 14:05
University of Bath (via Zoom) Claverton Down Road Bath, England, BA2 7AU United Kingdom (map)
Presenters:
Polly Winfield (top left)
David Clarke (bottom left)
Nina Parish (top right)
Ani Lecrivain (bottom right)
The collaborative research and subsequent paper presented in our session emerges from the Disputed Territories and Memory (DisTerrMem) project, which brings together academic and civil society partners from the UK, Poland, Armenia and Pakistan.
We will present outputs from our research, carried out with two diasporic memory organisations, Kresy-Siberia and Houshamadyan, which have both developed Internet platforms to collect and share information about lost homelands: in the former case, the pre-World War II eastern borderlands of Poland; in the latter, the Armenian communities of the Ottoman Empire that were destroyed by genocide.
Our paper, which draws from interviews undertaken with participants, examines the activism of these two diasporic memory groups and analyses the relationship between memory practice and the online space. The article asks what difference the creation of an online platform makes to such groups, both for individuals and for the wider diaspora, and seeks to understand how the possibilities offered by these platforms shape diasporic practice. The article shows how, despite the apparent similarities between the online presences of these two organizations, their use of the Internet facilitates diverse forms of memory practice, which are influenced by the historically specific needs of participants in these different diasporic communities.
This event is open to all.
To join:
Zoom link: https://bath-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/96716455320?pwd=T3R4dXJtOE94b1lpNDJpV3A1b1Q1Zz09
Meeting ID: 967 1645 5320
Passcode: 961642
For more information please contact Polly Winfield on
