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.
