Description of
the Action
We are living in times of deep contradictions. While our world accelerates and grows smaller through superfast digital networks, it is also marked by widening socio-economic disparities. We face viral pandemics, rapid species extinction, increased automation of work, quick fixes for mental health, political upheavals and displacements of old certainties. Adaptation and resilience to these challenges must draw on past experiences and cultural resources – this can only happen if we slow down and take time to remember well.
This Action addresses the need for increased interdisciplinarity in our understanding of how societies confront their past to contend with environmental, economic and social changes brought on by sudden events and by slow and creeping transformations. The future of peace, prosperity, politics, work and climate will depend upon how we remember socio-cultural and political changes. Transformative practices of remembrance – as objects of study and as critical interventions – will be shared collaboratively across Arts and Sciences in order to reveal the ways in which humans confront large-scale processes of change.
This Action will uniquely focus the attention of scholars, policymakers and cultural professionals on alternative paths to build resilience in the face of contemporary rapid-response culture. Through transnational and interdisciplinary discussions, we will address urgency, emergency, crisis and acceleration by drawing together the ‘multi-sited’, ‘eventless’ and slow-moving phenomena that can best be studied by ‘slowing down’ our research methods, to afford capacity building, knowledge generation and impact activities. Inspired by ‘slow science’ (Stengers 2018), we seek an alternative kind of social remembering.
Banner credit: Jenny Wüstenberg
Photo by Rob Curran on Unsplash
Slow Meetings and Profound Outcomes
In order to develop theory and methodologies to address slow memory through interdisciplinary conversations and engagement with stakeholders, we will meet regularly over the next four years, both virtually and in person. The central principle of our work together is to slow down our meeting and research practices, so as not to contribute to the culture of overwork and burnout that characterises contemporary academia.
Our Working Groups will meet four times a year, mostly virtually, to consider how slow memory applies in their focus area. We will also hold monthly reading groups, including one “slow reading” group, where we read out loud together. We have planned the following in-person meetings for the first years of the Action:
- March 2022: Leadership team meeting, Paris
- June 2022: “Debating the Concept” Conference, WG and MC meetings, Isle of Portland, UK
- April 2023: Leadership team meeting, Island of Cres, Croatia
- Summer 2023: “Slow Memory Methodology” Conference and Training School, Aarhus, Denmark
- Summer 2024: “Slow Memory Theory” Conference and Training School, Belgrade, Serbia
Action Objectives
The main aim of the Action is to trigger a new discovery phase in memory studies by providing a platform for incubating networked, transnational, multidisciplinary research that engages systematically with the insights of environmental science, Indigenous epistemologies, peace studies, and political economy
Capacity Building
- To foster knowledge exchange and the development of a joint research agenda around the emerging field of research related to slow memory through building networks that are organised across disciplinary and national boundaries.
- To involve early career scholars centrally in processes of conceptual development and strategic planning for this Action. We believe that early career scholars are less likely to be wedded to established disciplinary boundaries and conventions.
- To create synergies and new collaborations between WGs and existing research projects, especially those led by members from ITCs. This is important to address the common imbalance in favour of “Western” and research-dominant teams.
- To facilitate cooperation between practitioners in the heritage and cultural sector, policymakers, and researchers, to enhance the relevance and implementation of slow memory scholarship.
- To strengthen the dissemination capacity of research by designing more effective ways of incorporating knowledge about slow
Research Coordination
- To develop a shared understanding of slow memory as an approach to understanding and responding to grand-scale transformation. Bringing together theoretical approaches both from the field of memory studies and disciplines such as environmental science and engineering, law, political economy and Indigenous Studies, we will set new research agendas.
- To expand the field of memory studies through transdisciplinary WGs that will open up established epistemologies and research networks to new questions and collaborative links.
- To generate knowledge that is internationally and transculturally fluent. While our working language will be English, we will be able to draw on research about remembrance in different languages. The Action website will showcase and disseminate in various languages in order to break down this particular barrier to research innovation.
- To coordinate data collection cooperation and debate the best practices of oral history and other methodologies, as well as identify some of the major sites for investigating slow memory, such as deindustrialized zones, privatized care institutions, or areas that have experienced extreme environmental impact. These will concretely demonstrate the process of slow-moving change, as well as the community and individual responses.
- To develop a higher research profile for the concerns and research questions that are located under the umbrella of slow memory in order to facilitate further projects in an academic environment that privileges funding and publication in scholarly silos.
- To serve as a communication platform and intermediary for interested researchers, policymakers and cultural sector professionals.
