The politics of family memory: Insights from biographical and ethnographic perspectives
Adriana Patiño-Santos will examine how family memory is constructed and transmitted through the everyday communicative practices of displaced families.

What do exiled family members need to remember? How are these memories recalled?
Children who arrived at a young age or were born in exile negotiate the memories passed down and manage them in different ways. The ideas and data discussed in this seminar are drawn from the ongoing project Experiencing Exile as a Family: Colombian Exiles in the UK – The Imperative to Talk, which brings together perspectives and methods from ethnographically informed discourse studies on family and memory studies to explore how family memory is preserved and passed on far from ‘home’.
The focus will be on the families of Amparo and Nancy, Colombian refugees who have lived in the UK for over 30 years and consider how their past has shaped the present and futures of their children.
This event will be particularly useful for researchers.
Related links
- Centre for Applied Linguistics Research Seminars Series
- Centre for Applied Linguistics
- Culture, Communication and Media
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Paul Bradbury via Caia Image.
Dr Adriana Patiño-Santos
Director of the Centre for Linguistics, Language Education and Acquisition Research
Department of Languages, Cultures, and Linguistics, the University of Southampton
Her research interests include the connection between language, migration, young people, and family.
Ethnography and Narrative Inquiry are at the core of her research approach.