Institut Français-UCL: In Place(s) of Memory

11-12 December 2013
Marking the launch of a new collaboration between UCL and the Institut Français in London, and shortly before the centenary year of the beginning of World War I, we invite you to a public panel discussion with French, British and German historians on history, memory and commemoration. A full-day Colloquium on the next day showcases French and UCL research on the topic.

Launch

We will launch the season on 11 December 2013 with a high-profile public panel discussion. With the centenary year of WWI looming, it will be an occasion to revisit the long-standing tradition -proposed most prominently by French scholars Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora- that distinguishes history's putatively rationalised long-term view of the past from the immediate connection with it that collective memory seems to promise. On this occasion, panelists will particularly scrutinize the role of witness accounts, survivor testimony and intergenerational transmission.

The discussion will be followed by a reception to mark and celebrate the launch of the new agreement between the Institut Français and UCL in the Flaxman Gallery of the UCL Library. 

Speakers:

• Prof Olivier Wieviorka is Professor of Contemporary History at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan and also teaches at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. Among his most recent publication is Divided Memory: French Recollections of World War II from the Liberation to the Present (Stanford University Press, 2012).
• Prof Dorothee Wierling, is a historian and currently Director of the Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg (FZH) has worked, among others, on witnesses, oral history and the transgenerational transmission of traumatic war experiences with regard to Hamburg's "Feuersturm". She is currently Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor researching at the German Historical Institute and teaching at the London School of Economics  
• Prof Mary Fulbrook, FBA, is Professor of German History at UCL, Director of the European Institute and Dean of Social and Historical Sciences. Her research focuses above all on the twentieth-century German dictatorships, Europe after the Holocaust, and historiography and social theory. A former Chair of the German History Society and member of the Advisory Board of the German Historical Institute London, Mary is  a member of the Council of the British Academy and of the Advisory Boards of the Memorial Foundation for the former concentration camps of Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora, and the Bundeskanzler-Willy-Brandt-Stiftung.
• Chair: François Guesnet is Reader in Modern Jewish History at UCL. Before joining UCL, he held fellowships at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Pennsylvania, UCL, and Oxford University. He was part of the team establishing the Simon-Dubnow-Institute for Jewish History and Culture in Leipzig and held a Visiting Professorship at the University of Potsdam. His current research covers 18th and 19th c. Jewish intercession in Europe, Jewish self-government in Poland from its inception until the present, and anti-semitism in Eastern Central Europe after 1989.

Colloquium

This launch evening is complemented on 12 December with a one-day academic conference with senior and junior scholars from UCL and French universities.

Provisional Programme:

Joint lectures and PhD workshops

The launch event and colloquium will be followed by two joint lectures (note: all working titles):

• 22 January 2014: European Jews and photography:  Autobiography, evasion and integrity

  • Prof Michael Berkowitz (UCL Hebrew and Jewish) 
  • Prof Delphine Bechtel (Paris IV Sorbonne)

• 12 March 2014: Legacies of Colonialism in Europe
  

  • Prof Catherine Hall (UCL History)
  • Prof Myriam Cottias (CNRS)

Each of the joint lectures will be followed by a half-day PhD workshop with French and UCL doctoral students.

Information and registration available soon.

In cooperation with: