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The Memory Studies Network (MSN) of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS) at The New School for Social Research in partnership with the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) invites you to the 2025 International Conference: A Mnemonic Turn and the Future of Democratic Politics, at The New School for Social Research in New York City, April 24-25, 2025.
Presented by The Memory Studies Network (MSN) of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS) at The New School for Social Research in partnership with the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS).
T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Executive Dean, NSSR, and University Professor, The New School for Social Research
Elzbieta Matynia, Professor of Sociology; Director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, The New School for Social Research
Malkhaz Toria, Coordinator of the Memory Studies Network at The New School for Social Research
Rafał Rogulski, Director of the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity
Speakers:
Victor Apryshchenko (Bard college), Forced Slowness: Russian Politics of Memory in the Age of Uncertainty
Evmorfia Argyropoulou (Stony Brook University), National Narratives and Democracy: A Comparative Study of Post-War Memory Politics in Europe
Yurii Latysh (The George Washington University), Russia's enemy No. 1: Bandera in Ukraine's politics of memory during the Russo-Ukrainian War
Agnes Ciemny (The New School, Public Engagement), Niko Kao Ja – No One Like Me: Yugoslav Identity in a Post-Yugoslav World
Chair: Elzbieta Matynia, Professor of Sociology; Director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, The New School for Social Research
Speakers:
Johanna Bröse (Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie Hannover, Germany), Tracing Memory in Solidarity Movements
Tadeusz Koczanowicz (TCDS, The New School for Social Research), Migrant Crisis and the Memory of Revolutionary Solidarity in Poland
Noah Kupper (The New School for Social Research), Memory as Resistance: Reclaiming Collective Memory Against the Politics of Forgetting
Taebum Yoo (The New School for Social Research), American Landscapes of Oxymoron: Commemoration of Virtuous Villains and Vicious Victims
Chair: Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, The New School for Social Research
Speakers:
Tanvi Negi Malla (Doon University, India), Silent/Silenced Shouts: Literary Memory Activism in Contemporary China
Danielle C. Obisie-Orlu (Cornell University), Forget Me Not: A Mnemonical Approach to States’ Soft Power, Bargaining, and Leverage
Violet Handforth (The New School for Social Research), Sky Woman as Oral Tradition and Moral Theory
Erika Arias (Syracuse University) Beyond Violence: The Struggle for Accountability in Post-Repression Mexico
Chair: William Hirst, B. Smith Professor and Chair of Psychology (CSD), The New School for Social Research
Reassessing Postcommunist Transitional Justice and Memory Politics in Eastern Europe Through a Postcolonial Lens
Speakers:
William Partlett (Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies, University of Melbourne Law School), Constitutions and Post-Colonial Collective Memory in the Former Soviet Empire
Karolina Koziura (European University Institute), The Challenges of Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe: Decolonial Lessons from Ukraine
Lavinia Stan (Department of Political Science, St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia), and Delia Popescu (Le Moyne College), Transitional Justice, Decolonization and the Roma: A Perspective
Łukasz Kamiński (National Ossoliński Institute / University of Wrocław), Did We Decolonize without Realizing It? A Look Back at the Polish Experience of Dealing with the Communist Past
Chair: Gabor Danyi, European Network Remembrance and Solidarity
Difficult Past and Bridging Generations in a Global Context: Reimagining Testimonies, Memorial Traditions and Identities
Speakers:
Adam Koehler Brown (The New School for Social Research), Conflicting Memories of Insurrection
Chloe Kwak (University of Connecticut), Different Diasporic Memories and Identities: Korean Americans’ Diverging Mnemonic Practices in Constructing Comfort Women Memorials in the United States
Alex Rossen (The New School, Public Engagement), Building Intergenerational Links: Understanding How Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors Mobilize to Reinvent Holocaust Testimony in the United States
Tadek Markiewicz (University of Uppsala, Sweden), Can We Change the Subject? Holocaust as a Source of Poland’s Unease
Chair: Jack Jin Gary Lee, Professor of Sociology, The New School for Social Research
Roundtable: Memory, Geopolitics, and Democracy: Post-War and Post-Cold War Public Memories Revisited
Speakers:
Sarah Gensburger, Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Sciences Po (Sciences Po/CNRS)
Beata Ociepka, Institute of International and Security Studies, University of Wroclaw
Malkhaz Toria, Memory Studies Network at The New School for Social Research
Moderator: Rafał Rogulski, Director of the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity
Speakers:
Emmanuel Guerisoli (The New School for Social Research), The Fight for History: The Revalorization of State Terrorism in Far-Right Governments
Mihaela Șerban (Ramapo College of New Jersey), Law and the Collective Memory of Communism in Romania: the Ursu Case
Dolunay Bulut (University of Arizona), Mnemonic Constitutionalism and the Politics of Resentment
Rafael Lindau (University of Innsbruck), Austrian Memory Politics and Jewish Counter-Memory: An Autoethnography of Property … Restitution?
Chair: Jeremy Varon, Professor of History, New School for Social Research
Amy Sodaro completed her PhD in sociology at the New School for Social Research and is professor of sociology at the City University of New York/Borough of Manhattan Community College. Her research focuses on memorialization of past violence in memorial museums. She is the author of Lifting the Shadow: Reshaping Memory, Race and Slavery in US Museums (2025) and Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence (2018), and co-editor of Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics, Ethics and Society (2010), Museums and Sites of Persuasion: Politics, Memory and Human Rights (2019) and Museums and Mass Violence (2025).
The Memory Studies Network at the New School is based at The New School for Social Research (NSSR) under the auspices of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS). It was launched more than a decade ago by a cohort of graduate students. The conferences they organized over time that brought together leading scholars in social, cultural, and public memory across the disciplines, the fellowship programs, and finally an array of outstanding dissertations, made the New School a recognized site of Memory Studies, and one that contributed to shaping and establishing it as a field of study in the United States.
We work closely with interested graduate students, faculty, and our alumni to create a dynamic working hub, both intellectually inspiring and collegially supportive, to share the initial ideas, works-in-progress, research proposals, conference papers, dissertation chapters, and book manuscripts.
The Transregional Center for Democratic Studies: TCDS’s transregional and cross-departmental research and study programs, conducted both at home and abroad, bring together civic-minded students, junior and senior scholars, and civil society actors from various regional contexts. Our activities — region-based institutes, workshops, conferences, talks, and fellowships — are designed to further strengthen social and human capital, i.e., individuals and organizations concerned with the promise and sustainability of democracy. Our flagship projects have been the annual Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institutes (held in Poland since 1991 and also in South Africa from 1999 to 2015), aimed at a rigorous quest for a more textured understanding of the precariousness of democracy as it arises almost everywhere.
At the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, we foster dialogue on 20th-century European history. We do this by organising a wide range of projects, from exhibitions and publications to workshops, study visits and conferences. Our aim is, guided by the spirit of mutual trust, to support the development of a common European culture of remembrance.
Committed to amplifying diverse voices, The New School offers more than a thousand public programs and events each year, providing fresh perspectives and unique learning opportunities. These lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and performances feature prominent and emerging artists, activists, and thought leaders.
To receive updates about public programs and events at The New School, subscribe to our mailing list. Visit our Livestream and YouTube channels to watch select events live and recorded.
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