my name is Sarah Jones I am a professor in the Department Modern Languages here at the University of Birmingham my research interests are quite eclectic but I would probably put them all under the heading of memory activism by which I mean the ways in which institutions and individuals go out there to try to influence the ways in which we think about the past the ways in which you remember the past and their political implications of that and my research interests in this field divided up into t
wo key areas firstly the area of testimony so I'm very interested in the ways in which survivors of political violence or survivors of mass atrocities give an account of the past in order to contribute to that kind of activism to the ways in which we think about history the way we think about memory and particularly I'm interested in the ways in which culture culture understood very broadly but also understood quite specifically as films that literature can intervene in that process and be a spa
ce for survivors to give an account of their lives to give an account of their experiences and I'm thinking very broadly about the ways that this can be effective the ways they can promote the kinds of transitional justice the kinds of educational outcomes that we would want but also the ethics and the methods of mediating to has so many through different cultural forms concepts such as empathy and authenticity are very important in that context the other dimension of my work is looking at how m
emory activists and particularly memory institutions collaborate across borders across national borders in particular so thinking very particularly about what happens when memory actors memory institutions from different national contexts meet and the way that that can transform the kinds of narratives the kinds of stories about that are being told and in that context at the moment I'm working on my third book which has the provisional title towards the collaborative memory which is looking at h
ow German memory institutions connect with partners across the world and it really is a is a global network and tracking those networks quantitatively through social network analysis but then using my skills of literary and historical analysis to see how they're creating narratives around those relationships and how those narratives are transformed by the kinds of people involved so are they academics are they memorials are they state-funded institutions but also where these people are located a
re they located in Tunisia or are they located in the Czech Republic or in Poland and the implications of that for how we understand not how memories move across borders but how memories are really created at borders
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