9th Annual Meeting of the Memory Studies Association 

The conference is organized by Memory Studies Association, Charles University and Czech Academy of Sciences with the support of CEFRES.

Date: July 14–18, 2025
Location: Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
Language: English

With the theme Beyond Crises: Resilience and (In)stability, the conference seeks to explore how the memory of these events and other critical turning points has led to new tensions but also generated new possibilities. What patterns of decisive change can we observe? What is the role of memory in these processes, and how have they been commemorated? How have such critical turning points and their actors been collectively remembered and commemorated? And what can memory teach us amid the ongoing polycrisis?

Organized in the shadow of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, the rise of populist and authoritarian tendencies all over the world, imminent climate collapse and humanitarian crises including ones in public health, Beyond Crises invites a multifaceted discussion on what memory scholars can learn from the memory of earlier crises and how that knowledge might be used to deal with ongoing political and social standoffs. Looking at shared and divided memoryscapes and the voices of marginalized communities, the conference will make a major contribution to the understanding of how societies remember and learn from crises.

There will also be special events such as workshops, exhibitions and film screenings. To embed the conference in the beautiful city of Prague, we will also feature a cultural program (excursions and city walks) by cooperating closely with local memory activists, cultural partners and heritage sites.