Memory Studies Association (MSA) Conference 2025 in Prague

TraCe represented through Keynote and numerous contributions

In an old and splendid hall, the view goes over the audience to a wooden podium with people listening to a woman with blonde hair giving a speech.

From July 14 until 18, 2025, the ninth annual Memory Studies Association (MSA) conference “Beyond Crises: Resilience and (In)Stability” took place in Prague, Czech Republic. Astrid Erll de­livered the opening keynote on Monday evening, fo­cusing on the transcultural, digital, and environ­mental challenges of collective memory in our time. TraCe was re­presented through contributions from TraCe members Astrid Erll, Kaya de Wolff, Sabine Mannitz, Jona Schwerer, and Sybille Frank as well as Visiting Fellows A. Dirk Moses and Jephta Nguherimo and Asso­ciate Fellow Özge Özedmir. 

A woman with a microphone in her hand stands next to a wooden podium where a man is sitting and she looks at the wall on which a presentation is projected.

Astrid Erll hosted the roundtable “Breaking down the silos: Collective memory research and the challenge of in­terdisciplinarity”. With their contribution about co-authoring as a de­colonial strategy for scholarship in Memory Studies, Jephta Nguherimo and Kaya de Wolff jointly contri­buted to the panel “Mediating postcolonial memory”. Moreover, Kaya de Wolff partici­pated in the panel “Popularising difficult pasts: Walking tours at the intersection of memory acti­vism, education and commerce”, where she presented a paper on Black-Indigenous places of memory in São Paulo.

Sabine Mannitz co-organized a panel together with TraCe Fellow A. Dirk Moses on “Tran­snational drivers and political divides in colonial genocide memory”. Sally Ghattas, Sabine Mannitz, and A. Dirk Moses, con­tributed to the panel. They presented their research on “Genocide Memory and Aboriginal Identity in Australia”, “Paths and Problems of Transitional Justice in Canada” and on current con­troversies about the applicability of the concept of genocide to the situation in Gaza.

A man with a bald head and thick-rimmed glasses, a woman with blonde hair and a colorful dress and a woman with long black hair stand in front of a large window through which you can see a castle and the old town.

Jona Schwerer and Sybille Frank presented their research on “Me­morialising terrorist violence in urban public spaces” on the panel “Urban terror­ism and memory in Europe”, which was co-organized by Katharina Karcher and Jona Schwerer. Özge Özdemir con­tributed to the panel “Remembering Exile” with her pre­sentation titled “Exile, Memory and Belonging within Liminal Realms.”

The MSA annual conference aims to encourage the transdisciplinary ex­change on memory and its social, cultural and public relevance. The 2025 con­ference took place at Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences in the historic city of Prague. More information about the conference can be found in the report published by Charles University in Prague.