Online Symposium | 29 May 2026
On 29 May 2026, the Institute for Cultural Identity and Memory Studies at the University of St Andrews and the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt jointly hosted the online postgraduate symposium “Memory as a Future Practice”. The symposium brought together 15 speakers from five countries: the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, and India. With 78 attendees joining over the course of the day, the event created a lively international space for postgraduate researchers working across disciplines and time zones.
The topic “Memory as a Future Practice” invited participants to think about memory not only as a way of preserving the past, but as a practice that shapes what can be imagined, expected, feared, hoped for, or built. This idea unfolded across five panels (“Rememory”, “Reimagination”, “Reframing”, “Renegotiations”, and “Rebuilding”) in which speakers approached memory from fields including psychology, computer science, literary studies, language learning, art history, international relations, geography, and social anthropology. Together, the presentations showed how acts of remembering can unsettle inherited narratives and make futures thinkable.
At the centre of the day was a joint keynote lecture by Professor Catherine O’Leary, Director of the Institute for Cultural Identity and Memory Studies, and Professor Dr Dr h.c. Astrid Erll, Director of the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform. Their lecture, “Memory and the Future in Life and Literature: From Reinhart Koselleck to Rita Indiana”, reflected on the continued relevance of Koselleck’s concepts of “space of experience” and “horizon of expectation” for memory studies today. Through a reading of Rita Indiana’s “Tentacle”, they considered how literature and art allow us to explore possible histories and possible futures, while also challenging dominant narratives of progress.
The symposium offered a rich and thoughtful space for emerging scholars to share their work and reflect together on the future-oriented dimensions of memory. The symposium also laid the foundation for the collaboration between St Andrews and Frankfurt, strengthening connections between postgraduate researchers and memory studies communities across borders.
