Mnemonic Populism in Contemporary Europe

Freigeist-Fellowship der VolkswagenStiftung

April 2023 - März 2028
Principal Investigator

This project explores the role and relevance of collective memory in right-wing populism. Following the most commonly accepted definitions of populism as a form of political communication based on a moral dichotomy between the pure people and the corrupt elite, in which the former are considered to be the only legitimate source of political power, I define mnemonic populism as poll-driven, manifestly moralistic and above all anti-pluralist imaginings of the past. The innovativeness of my project lies in its holistic approach toward political agency. Whereas the study of memory politics has usually been focused on mnemonic strategies pursued by the state, this project acknowledges the critical role of the entanglements between political actors and social movements. What is more, the activities pursued by right-wing authorities and activists are only part of a much larger universe consisting of heterogeneous and yet mutually reinforcing cultural and commercial developments. As a result, I explore different settings of discursive and performative memory-making extending between the official and unofficial, political and popular, and public and private forces. By studying the mechanisms of mnemonic populism in Western and Eastern Europe since the 1970s, I bring together memory and populism studies in order to explain what can happen to history in illiberal surroundings.

Czechoslovak-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in the Cold War Between High Politics and Individual Strategies

Tschechisch-polnisches Kooperationsprojekt(OPUS LAP 20: NCN & GAČR)

Dezember 2021 – Dezember 2024
Forscherin
Kooperationsprojekt zwischen dem Masaryk-Institut – Archiv der Tschechischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Prag und dem Institut für Geschichte der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Warschau
Projektleitung: Dr. Tomáš Pavlíček & Dr. Jan Surman

Natural and social scientists in Poland and Czechoslovakia entered the post-war situation with visions of democratic education, hopes related to new methods, and networks of scholarly contacts from inter-war and imperial times. However, the new political, military and economic conditions set by the Cold War dramatically changed their personal and professional lives. By focusing on mathematicians, astronomers and geologists on the one side, and economists, sociologists and social scientists on the other, this project studies the effects of these changes on scholarly practices across the Polish-Czechoslovak border in the context of bourgeoning research on the history of science in the global Cold War.

Einst deutsches Kulturerbe, Branding und die "Erzeugung der Lokalität" in Masuren - ausgewählte Fallstudien

Kooperationsprojekt mit der Stiftung "NUMINOSUM", Warschau(Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung)

Dezember 2022 - November 2023
Ko-Leiterin

By studying selected instances of cultural heritage left behind by Germans after their flight and expulsion from those parts of East Prussia that have become part of Poland in 1945, this project explores the socio-cultural effects of the most extensive and complex instance of cultural succession in post-war Europe. We set out to explore the relationship between cultural heritage and branding – both in theory and in practice. Theoretically, we think together seminal concepts of cultural heritage, branding and the “production of locality” (Appadurai). Empirically, we collect and analyse material related to selected cases of using post-German heritage in contemporary north-eastern Poland.

Memory in Translation Environments: Exploring Multilinguality of Memory Studies

Kooperationsprojekt mit der Jagiellonen-Universität, Krakau

März 2023 - Februar 2025
Ko-Leiterin mit Mischa Gabowitsch (Wien), Magda Heydel (Krakau), Roma Sendyka (Krakau)

Historical and cultural experience is not divided along linguistic lines, whereas records of its memory are. The aim of this project is to study the various entanglements of language and memory in multilingual environments. By focusing on a range of different settings including cities, families, legal institutions and cultural production, we want to understand how memory is constructed and deconstructed via translation. Geographically, we will move between Europe, North America and the Middle East. Empirically, we are mainly interested in post-Holocaust and post-colonial testimonies. The project includes a series of workshops with invited scholars who work at the intersection of history, memory studies and translation studies: Peter Davies (University of Edinburgh, Scotland), Hannah Pollin-Galay (Tel Aviv University, Israel), Sherry Simon (Concordia University in Montreal, Canada) and Yasemin Yildiz (University of California, Los Angeles, USA).