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Announcements

NELK

Sep 3 2026
- 04.09.2026

Mnemonics Summer School

Direktlink

NELK

Aug 27 2026

A special issue to appear in Memory Studies Review

Call for Papers: (Post)Coloniality and Memory

Special Issue editors: Simina Dragoș, John Njenga Karugia, Sahra Rausch, Meghan Tinsley 

The field of memory studies emerged primarily from European and US scholarship, which provided key concepts, such as 'collective memory' (Halbwachs), 'lieux de mémoire' (Nora), and 'cultural memory' (Assmann). Although Holocaust studies has been at the core of its focus, memory studies has always been an interdisciplinary field, engaging with literary theory, historiography, critical theory, heritage studies, and a range of other fields that shaped it in the twentieth century. It was, from the outset, a concerted attempt to understand how memory is produced and what it is used for, for example how people made sense of historical events, and how they constructed the past through the lens of their own experiences. Overwhelmingly, the canonical figures of memory studies have been Western scholars who drew from European memories of the past and their impact on Western societies. 

More recent work in memory studies has highlighted collective memory across the globe, theorised the multidirectional memory of empire, centred anti-colonial countermemories and suggested more diverse ways of 'doing memory' (e.g. Adebayo 2023, Kahan 2024, Mwambari 2023, Ndlovu et al. 2024, Pandurang 2020, Rothberg 2014, Wegner et al. 2025). Drawing from postcolonial and decolonial thought, as well as Southern theory, these contributions have sought to provincialise and complicate the canon of memory studies. Increasingly, postcolonial and decolonial interventions have made their way into the institutions of memory studies–for example, the Memory Studies Association hosts every alternate annual meeting outside of Europe, and convenes regional associations in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. 

Adding to existing efforts, this special issue proposes a systematic postcolonial turn in memory studies. It does so by taking stock of the dialogue between memory studies, postcolonial theory, and decolonial thought, as well as inviting new theorising on the (post)coloniality of memory. Amidst the global surge of the far right, the uses and abuses of collective memory (including 'decolonisation') by authoritarian regimes, and the urgency of bearing witness to, and remembering, ongoing genocides, we call for scholars of memory studies to interrogate the relationship between memory studies and coloniality, and to explore the liberatory potential of memory studies' conceptual and methodological tools. Indeed, we are also seeing bonds being formed and called upon in the face of mass violence and the rise of the extreme right, sparking solidarity politics in the realm of memory and beyond. In this regard, we invite scholars to examine various forms of mobilisations for solidarity at local, regional, national, and transnational scales in response to the contemporary polycrisis. Our hope is that this special issue will be both an expression of solidarity with, and a toolkit for, anticolonial cultural activists. 

We invite interventions that engage with themes including (but not limited to):

  • Speaking back to the canon of memory studies
  • Postcolonial patterns of remembering and forgetting
  • The power dynamics of knowledge production in memory studies
  • The role of memory studies in fighting racism and fascism
  • Memory activism and/against the weaponisation of history
  • Appropriation of the language of decoloniality
  • Legacies of European empires in individual and collective memory  
Abstracts of 150-200 words should be submitted via this form by 15 September 2026. Applicants will be notified of the editors' decision by 15 October 2026. Full drafts of 6,000 words, including references, must be submitted by 28 February 2027. Accepted articles will be published in a special issue of Memory Studies Review in the summer of 2028.

Direktlink

NELK

Jun 23 2026
18:00

Eva von Contzen (Freiburg): Telling Again, Anew, Against: Repetition and Literary History

Eva von Contzen_guestlecture_profile
June 23, 6pm
Campus Westend, IG 3.14 (Eisenhower Room)

What does it mean to retell a story? In recent Anglophone literature, retellings have become extremely popular, from Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls to Percival Everett's James. Retellings use existing, often much older, narrative material, and tell the story anew by adapting it to the needs and expectations of a contemporary readership. Placing the current trend of retellings in its wider context of literary history, I argue that repetition is the key generator of meaning in the retelling process. 

Eva von Contzen is professor of English Literature including the literature of the Middle Ages at the University of Freiburg. She is PI of the ERC-funded project “Retelling and Repetition (DERIVATE)". Her research interests include narrative theory, literary history, reception studies, retellings, and lists. 

Direktlink

NELK

Jun 11 2026
16:00

Postcolonial/postsocialist memories as constellations. Reading ‘returning transitions’ in Anglophone and Russophone literatures

Ksenia Robbe (Groningen University): New Frontiers in Memory Studies: Ksenia Robbe on postcolonial/postsocialist memories as constellations

Ksenia Robbe_guestlecture_profile
June 11, 4pm
Campus Westend, Casino 1.812

This talk will reflect on the study of intersections between memories of the Cold-War aftermaths in postcolonial and postsocialist contexts and will propose 'constellational reading' as an approach for discerning and initiating dialogues across such diverse locations. Drawing upon my research on contemporary literatures from South Africa and Russia and through several examples, I will outline how this reading can illuminate global connections between memory practices that centre on the 'transitions' from apartheid and state socialism. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's ideas and applied to memory studies, this method, I will suggest, can yield interpretative tools for reading trans-regionally against geopolitical narratives. 


Ksenia Robbe is a Senior Lecturer in European Culture and Literature at the University of Groningen and currently a Humboldt Fellow at Goethe-University Frankfurt. Her research sits at the intersection of postcolonial and postsocialist studies, with the focus on concepts and practices of memory, time, gender, and feminism in literature and film.


(Photo credit: Ronnie Zeemering)
Direktlink

NELK

Mai 28 2026
16:00

Paul Leworthy (Newcastle University): Public Memory in Postmigrant Germany: Remembering Hanau in “Das deutsche Volk”

Paul Leworthy_guestlecture_profile

May 28, 4pm
Campus Westend, Cas 1.812

Directed by Marcin Wierzchowski, Das deutsche Volk (2025) is a black-and-white feature-length documentary about the events and the aftermath of the shootings in Hanau, Germany, in 2020, in which a far-right extremist killed nine people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Rather than simply recounting what happened on the night of the attacks, the film follows the victims' families over four years, focussing on their suffering and their struggles for justice, accountability, and commemoration. In this lecture, I will discuss how Das Deutsche Volk both documents and performs memory work, while also thinking about how the film entangles public memory with questions about belonging. 

Paul Leworthy is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Newcastle University. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. His first monograph, The Shape of Memory, will appear with Peter Lang later this year. He is founding co-Editor-in-Chief of Memory Studies Review and host of the Connecting Memories Podcast. 
Direktlink

NELK

Mai 7 2026
16:00

Natalie Braber (Nottingham Trent): Working with ‘pit talk’, the language of coal miners in the East Midlands

Natalie Braber_guestlecture_profile
May 7, 4 pm
Campust Westend, Cas 1.812

This talk explores the unique words and phrases used by coal miners in the East Midlands, revealing how language shaped their working lives and communities. Through oral history interviews, miners shared stories about the terms they used underground and how these changed when people moved in from other regions, like the North-East and Scotland. These conversations show that mining language was more than technical – it was part of local identity and culture. Many miners did not realise how important their words were, but they form a vital part of this heritage. Preserving this language helps keep the history and voices of mining alive.
Natalie Braber is Professor of Linguistics at Nottingham Trent University. Her research focuses on the accents and dialects of the East Midlands, including pit talk. Her publications include East Midlands English (2018), Lexical Variation of an East Midlands Coal Mining Community (2022) and Sociolinguistic Approaches to Lexical Variation in English (2025). She works on language as heritage, accent discrimination and language and memory. Her projects include collaboration with those in the fields of creative writing, poetry, photography, art and theatre in order to co-create with local communities.
Direktlink

NELK

Sep 3 2026
- 04.09.2026

Mnemonics Summer School

Direktlink

NELK

Aug 27 2026

A special issue to appear in Memory Studies Review

Call for Papers: (Post)Coloniality and Memory

Special Issue editors: Simina Dragoș, John Njenga Karugia, Sahra Rausch, Meghan Tinsley 

The field of memory studies emerged primarily from European and US scholarship, which provided key concepts, such as 'collective memory' (Halbwachs), 'lieux de mémoire' (Nora), and 'cultural memory' (Assmann). Although Holocaust studies has been at the core of its focus, memory studies has always been an interdisciplinary field, engaging with literary theory, historiography, critical theory, heritage studies, and a range of other fields that shaped it in the twentieth century. It was, from the outset, a concerted attempt to understand how memory is produced and what it is used for, for example how people made sense of historical events, and how they constructed the past through the lens of their own experiences. Overwhelmingly, the canonical figures of memory studies have been Western scholars who drew from European memories of the past and their impact on Western societies. 

More recent work in memory studies has highlighted collective memory across the globe, theorised the multidirectional memory of empire, centred anti-colonial countermemories and suggested more diverse ways of 'doing memory' (e.g. Adebayo 2023, Kahan 2024, Mwambari 2023, Ndlovu et al. 2024, Pandurang 2020, Rothberg 2014, Wegner et al. 2025). Drawing from postcolonial and decolonial thought, as well as Southern theory, these contributions have sought to provincialise and complicate the canon of memory studies. Increasingly, postcolonial and decolonial interventions have made their way into the institutions of memory studies–for example, the Memory Studies Association hosts every alternate annual meeting outside of Europe, and convenes regional associations in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. 

Adding to existing efforts, this special issue proposes a systematic postcolonial turn in memory studies. It does so by taking stock of the dialogue between memory studies, postcolonial theory, and decolonial thought, as well as inviting new theorising on the (post)coloniality of memory. Amidst the global surge of the far right, the uses and abuses of collective memory (including 'decolonisation') by authoritarian regimes, and the urgency of bearing witness to, and remembering, ongoing genocides, we call for scholars of memory studies to interrogate the relationship between memory studies and coloniality, and to explore the liberatory potential of memory studies' conceptual and methodological tools. Indeed, we are also seeing bonds being formed and called upon in the face of mass violence and the rise of the extreme right, sparking solidarity politics in the realm of memory and beyond. In this regard, we invite scholars to examine various forms of mobilisations for solidarity at local, regional, national, and transnational scales in response to the contemporary polycrisis. Our hope is that this special issue will be both an expression of solidarity with, and a toolkit for, anticolonial cultural activists. 

We invite interventions that engage with themes including (but not limited to):

  • Speaking back to the canon of memory studies
  • Postcolonial patterns of remembering and forgetting
  • The power dynamics of knowledge production in memory studies
  • The role of memory studies in fighting racism and fascism
  • Memory activism and/against the weaponisation of history
  • Appropriation of the language of decoloniality
  • Legacies of European empires in individual and collective memory  
Abstracts of 150-200 words should be submitted via this form by 15 September 2026. Applicants will be notified of the editors' decision by 15 October 2026. Full drafts of 6,000 words, including references, must be submitted by 28 February 2027. Accepted articles will be published in a special issue of Memory Studies Review in the summer of 2028.

Direktlink

NELK

Jun 23 2026
18:00

Eva von Contzen (Freiburg): Telling Again, Anew, Against: Repetition and Literary History

Eva von Contzen_guestlecture_profile
June 23, 6pm
Campus Westend, IG 3.14 (Eisenhower Room)

What does it mean to retell a story? In recent Anglophone literature, retellings have become extremely popular, from Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls to Percival Everett's James. Retellings use existing, often much older, narrative material, and tell the story anew by adapting it to the needs and expectations of a contemporary readership. Placing the current trend of retellings in its wider context of literary history, I argue that repetition is the key generator of meaning in the retelling process. 

Eva von Contzen is professor of English Literature including the literature of the Middle Ages at the University of Freiburg. She is PI of the ERC-funded project “Retelling and Repetition (DERIVATE)". Her research interests include narrative theory, literary history, reception studies, retellings, and lists. 

Direktlink

NELK

Jun 11 2026
16:00

Postcolonial/postsocialist memories as constellations. Reading ‘returning transitions’ in Anglophone and Russophone literatures

Ksenia Robbe (Groningen University): New Frontiers in Memory Studies: Ksenia Robbe on postcolonial/postsocialist memories as constellations

Ksenia Robbe_guestlecture_profile
June 11, 4pm
Campus Westend, Casino 1.812

This talk will reflect on the study of intersections between memories of the Cold-War aftermaths in postcolonial and postsocialist contexts and will propose 'constellational reading' as an approach for discerning and initiating dialogues across such diverse locations. Drawing upon my research on contemporary literatures from South Africa and Russia and through several examples, I will outline how this reading can illuminate global connections between memory practices that centre on the 'transitions' from apartheid and state socialism. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's ideas and applied to memory studies, this method, I will suggest, can yield interpretative tools for reading trans-regionally against geopolitical narratives. 


Ksenia Robbe is a Senior Lecturer in European Culture and Literature at the University of Groningen and currently a Humboldt Fellow at Goethe-University Frankfurt. Her research sits at the intersection of postcolonial and postsocialist studies, with the focus on concepts and practices of memory, time, gender, and feminism in literature and film.


(Photo credit: Ronnie Zeemering)
Direktlink

NELK

Mai 28 2026
16:00

Paul Leworthy (Newcastle University): Public Memory in Postmigrant Germany: Remembering Hanau in “Das deutsche Volk”

Paul Leworthy_guestlecture_profile

May 28, 4pm
Campus Westend, Cas 1.812

Directed by Marcin Wierzchowski, Das deutsche Volk (2025) is a black-and-white feature-length documentary about the events and the aftermath of the shootings in Hanau, Germany, in 2020, in which a far-right extremist killed nine people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Rather than simply recounting what happened on the night of the attacks, the film follows the victims' families over four years, focussing on their suffering and their struggles for justice, accountability, and commemoration. In this lecture, I will discuss how Das Deutsche Volk both documents and performs memory work, while also thinking about how the film entangles public memory with questions about belonging. 

Paul Leworthy is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Newcastle University. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. His first monograph, The Shape of Memory, will appear with Peter Lang later this year. He is founding co-Editor-in-Chief of Memory Studies Review and host of the Connecting Memories Podcast. 
Direktlink

NELK

Mai 7 2026
16:00

Natalie Braber (Nottingham Trent): Working with ‘pit talk’, the language of coal miners in the East Midlands

Natalie Braber_guestlecture_profile
May 7, 4 pm
Campust Westend, Cas 1.812

This talk explores the unique words and phrases used by coal miners in the East Midlands, revealing how language shaped their working lives and communities. Through oral history interviews, miners shared stories about the terms they used underground and how these changed when people moved in from other regions, like the North-East and Scotland. These conversations show that mining language was more than technical – it was part of local identity and culture. Many miners did not realise how important their words were, but they form a vital part of this heritage. Preserving this language helps keep the history and voices of mining alive.
Natalie Braber is Professor of Linguistics at Nottingham Trent University. Her research focuses on the accents and dialects of the East Midlands, including pit talk. Her publications include East Midlands English (2018), Lexical Variation of an East Midlands Coal Mining Community (2022) and Sociolinguistic Approaches to Lexical Variation in English (2025). She works on language as heritage, accent discrimination and language and memory. Her projects include collaboration with those in the fields of creative writing, poetry, photography, art and theatre in order to co-create with local communities.
Direktlink