About PIMs
The interdisciplinary research centre Places, Identities and Memories (PIMs) studies how “space” becomes a “place” and what it means for people’s lives and their futures.
The key overarching questions we seek to answer are:
- How are places, and connected identities, shaped by history, geography, economy, culture, and movements of people?
- What are the political, social and economic consequences of various divisions of spaces into places?
- What is the role of memory and identities in forging a sense of belonging to and experience of a place?
- How is the history of a place (re)constructed across generations through memories and identities?
- How are crises and shocks, included those generated by new technological developments, changing people’s understandings of spaces and places?
These questions are of particular importance in Central, East and Southeast Europe (C/SEE) due to its complex and diverse histories where a sense of belonging to a geographical location has always been fluid, multifaceted and highly contested, often with disastrous consequences. Across the history, and notably in modern times, C/SEE has been particularly affected by violent events, territorial shifts and border changes that have left lasting impacts on locally embedded as well as overarching identities and memories. Today, many of the countries in C/SEE are still coping with the consequences of these dramatic changes, renegotiating their identities and memories.