Collective memory and cultural dynamics

The four years of interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research of a wide spectrum of processes that decidedly mark collective memory of the post-WWII world and the seminal events around 1989 have gave ample results. This is a sound basis for the continuation of the programme and our efforts to focus on analysis of culture of shaping and re-shaping contemporary memory practices and the related cultural processes.

The contemporary culture of memory not only influences the politics of the past or the regimes of historiography and historical interpretations but through different cultural (literature, the internet, cinema, painting, etc.) and social practices profoundly marks the quotidian. The development of media technologies and strategies has uprooted memory management from the sphere of political, while on the other hand the political, in post-socialist countries, has been never before so tightly intertwined with the interpretations of the past.