The two main aims are

(i) to produce empirical studies using three main types of source:

  • written (archival, press, literary, diaries, etc.),
  • individual and group interviews,
  • visual records and evidence;

(ii) to develop and test a theoretical and methodological approach to the study of relations between place and memory that may be applied in other contexts.

The objectives are to provide a much clearer understanding of place and memory in an urban context than has been available hitherto and to disseminate findings through appropriately diverse outputs.

All these will be made available as resources to other researchers.


Research Imperative and Context:

Internationally, memory studies have proliferated in various disciplines over the past 20 years. Relatively few studies, however, have defined their object clearly or made their presuppositions explicit, and this has justifiably made the ‘memory industry’ vulnerable to criticism. There is frequent confusion between memory, commemoration and representation and a questionable assumption that individual and social/cultural memory are similar in kind and just differ in scale. Much of the historical work to date has focussed on memories of traumatic experiences – wars, massacres, above all the Holocaust – or on official sites and rituals, such as war memorials and public commemorations. In Italy, too, most memory research has concentrated on contested moments of public history such as the Resistance and Nazi massacres, ‘places of memory’ of a public kind (Isnenghi 1996-7), or the memory of particular social groups, notably the working class. Other types of place memory, such as that of perceived boundaries or movements within a neighbourhood, and the memory of different social groups, have been relatively neglected. Isnenghi’s project mirrors that on France edited by Nora (1984-92); in both, despite the intrinsic quality of some of the essays, the notion of what constitutes a ‘place’ is undertheorised.


It is only very recently that the complicated connections between memory, forgetting and place have begun to be explored in anthropology, urban studies and archaeology (e.g. Feld and Basso 1996, Forty and Küchler 1999, Bender 1993). As yet, though, little historical work has been done on relations between urban space, everyday practices and memories, although these ideas are central to the influential writings of Benjamin (1999) and Certeau (1980). In Italy there are strong research traditions both in oral history/popular memory and in studies of urban places, but the two have rarely been brought together, with a few notable exceptions (Passerini 1984, Portelli 1985, Gribaudi 1987). No cross-city work has been done, either in Italy or internationally, on relations between memory and place.


This project is intended to fill this gap. It will look both at individual memory narratives and at ritualised forms of social memory (Connerton 1989). We follow Casey (1993) in defining ‘place’ as space that may be occupied, or imagined as occupied, by human bodies and events. Memory may rightly be said to inhere not in places but in people (and consequently to be mobile rather than ‘fixed’ in buildings or streets), and yet urban places are commonly ‘given shape’, ‘filled out’, by memory. This may be either habitual and informal (e.g. the recalling of routes, landmarks, buildings) or formalised (e.g. cartography, secular pilgrimages, gatherings on particular sites). Memories are often projected onto places and places may serve as aids or triggers to memory, like the loci of classical mnemonics. They are also bound up with the interrelated processes of erasure of places (e.g. the destruction of a building or a district), repression of traumatic memories and forgetting.


The research will build on the collective project ‘City and Identity: Milan and Turin in the Industrial Era’, directed by Dr Robert Lumley and based at the UCL Centre for Italian Studies, to which a British Academy Institutional Research Fellowship (total value £139,428, awarded to UCL for John Foot) was attached in 1996-2000. In particular it will draw on Foot’s earlier work on Milan, the research networks already established and the experience of working groups, symposia and cross-city comparisons. However, it will take the investigation of cities in a completely new direction. It will include, alongside Milan, four cities not studied in the first project; whereas the latter dealt mainly with identity, migration and cultural change, this will focus on memory, will use new methods and outputs (notably the website and video essays) and will be explicitly concerned to advance the theory and methodology of memory research.

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Research methods:


(i) Archival: state and other collections (Istituto De Martino and Fondazione Feltrinelli, Milan; Istituto Gramsci, Fondazione Basso, Archivio audiovisivo del movimento operaio, Rome; Istituti per la storia del movimento di liberazione, etc.) for unpublished memoirs and diaries, transcripts of earlier oral history studies, photographs and documentary films.

(iii) Libraries (Italy and UK): newspapers and other printed sources, including literary texts, maps, redevelopment plans.

(iii) Oral history: 20 individual interviews in each city (Naples and Rome, Year 2; Milan, Venice-Marghera, Messina, Year 3) combining life history narratives with structured questioning. Interviewees will be invited to give a verbal account of their memories of a given place or event and to ‘show and tell’ using mementoes and photographs.

(iv) Group interviews. Pilot interviews will be done in Year 2 to try out the method; groups will then be selected and interviewed in Naples and Rome in Year 2 and the other cities in Year 3 to enable us to test, compare and develop our findings with a common methodological instrument. Unlike individual interviews, group interviews can show memories emerging within an interactive context and respondents can stimulate and deepen each other’s reactions.

(v) Video essays. John Quick will supervise this part of the research in liaison with the UCL team. Each researcher will use a digital still and video camera to investigate relations between memory and place and record findings. S/he will document visual and aural memories of salient events, routes, mental maps, etc. Video will also be used to record (subject to interviewees’ agreement) individual and group interviews, objects, family snaps, etc. Maps, aerial photographs and archive film will be incorporated. Post-production of the essays will be done at Royal Holloway.

(vi) Working groups. Researchers will meet regularly to discuss issues common to all five case studies and monitor their development through reports and work-in-progress papers. These meetings will also have a management function, enabling the project director to keep tabs on budget, deadlines and the work of the research assistants.

(vii) Symposia and conference. Symposia will be held yearly for the first three years of the project; invited speakers and discussants will meet project researchers to discuss pre-circulated papers. The conference, in Year 4, will help draw together the case studies, disseminate findings and create dialogue with a wider research community.
(viii) Website to solicit feedback from the public and academic community.

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Role of individual Project Team Members:

In addition to their city studies, Forgacs will be responsible for liaison with Royal Holloway, Foot for general project management and Dickie for data management. Dines will work full-time on the project from 1/1/02 to 31/08/03 and Cerasi half-time from 1/09/02 to 31/08/05; they will help (i) create and maintain the website; (ii) prepare individual and group interviews (Dines Naples and Rome only); (iii) conduct and analyse interviews (Dines in Naples only); (iv) crew one other video essay; (v) locate research materials; (vi) organise working groups and symposia. The technical assistant, based at Royal Holloway, will work half-time throughout. S/he will be an experienced video maker and editor who will provide essential creative and technical help with the video essays. Quick will supervise and support her/his work. For details of data collection timetable see Appendix 2 section 1.
Casual assistance for consultancies and training for group interviews and transcription of all interviews is budgeted under Special Costs.

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References:
  • Bender, B. (ed.) Landscape: Politics and Perspectives (1993).
  • Benjamin, W., The Arcades Project [1926-38] (1999).
  • Casey, E.S., Getting Back into Place (1993).
  • Certeau, M. de, L’Invention du quotidien, Vol 1 (1980).
  • Connerton, P. How Societies Remember (1989).
  • Feld, S. and Basso, K.H., Senses of Place (1996).
  • Forty, A. and Küchler, S. (eds), The Art of Forgetting (1999).
  • Gribaudi, M., Mondo operaio e mito operaio (1987).
  • Isnenghi, M. (ed.), I luoghi della memoria, 3 vols (1996-7).
  • Nora, P. (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire, 3 vols (1984-92).
  • Passerini, L., Torino operaia e fascismo. Una storia orale (1984).
  • Portelli, A., Biografia di una città…Terni, 1830-1985 (1985).

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