TL4 – Memory and Heritage

Coordination: Rui Rego

The thematic line “Memory and Heritage” enhances the strategic dialogue of researchers and research groups at the Center for Global Studies (CEG). Memory and heritage are two pillars of identity: cultural, political and social, individual and collective. This thematic line fosters the interweaving of methodologies and related epistemological questions that thus promote the creativity and innovation of ongoing projects.

This thematic line provides a reflection on traumatic memory and difficult heritage; identity/ies and alterity/ies; citizenship, globalization and human rights; the preservation of environmental heritage (sustainability); tangible and intangible heritage; the laws and public policies of memory; representations of memory in literature and education; public space management; health ecologies (hospital history and urbanism); the philosophy of architecture and utopias. The line unites and thematically interconnects, in an interdisciplinary way, different investigative focuses, which are specialized and materialized in different research groups.

Globality and “global thinking” (taking up a phrase by Edgar Morin) require rethinking complex space and time. How do we think about the memory and heritage of which we are heirs? How is collective memory constructed, used and preserved? How do we define, conserve and protect tangible and intangible heritage? The line promotes a permanent seminar between investigations, that is, a meeting of points of view and an articulated debate of ideas, connecting specialties, methodologies and perspectives, encouraging criticism, excellence and innovation. Concepts, methods, procedures, information and knowledge from different university departments converge in an effort to better understand the complexity that globality has brought to the epistemological study of contemporary phenomena.

At CEG, the thematic line “Memory and Heritage” guarantees unity around one of the Center’s strategic lines: articulating and systematizing knowledge in a network,  and allowing it to position itself as a reference on a global scale. In this sense, in the field of Heritage and Memory, for example, CEG established an important partnership with the HII-Heritage International Institute (Bologna, Italy) in January 2024 in order to develop specialized studies dedicated to heritage tangible and intangible, and currently hosts the international project “Mnemonic Reality” which works on memory laws prohibiting Holocaust denial in all Member States of the European Union.