DisTerrMem (Memory Across Borders) brought together an international and interdisciplinary team to explore how competing memories of disputed territories can be best managed. Working across three key regions - Eastern Europe, South Asia and the South Caucasus - the seven partners from Poland, Armenia, Lithuania, the UK and Pakistan explored the roles of four key actors - civil society, cultural practitioners, nation states and regional organisations - in managing such memories.
Over the last decades, cosmopolitan approaches advocating 'shared' narratives in areas of longstanding conflicts have often failed since a consensus about disputed territories has proven too difficult to achieve. In recent years, civil society groups have increasingly challenged dominant representations of the national community, seeking to establish multiple stories and alternative commemorative practices.
DisTerrMem examined how adopting an agonistic approach to memory provides new opportunities for managing competing memories in non-conflictual ways. It brought together interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral expertise to move the debate beyond the European frame to develop an alternative theoretical and methodological framework to antagonism, identify examples of agonistic memory management and promote examples of best practice at multiple levels, sharing these with policymakers, civil society organizations and cultural practitioners in range of contexts.
The project’s key objectives were the following:
a. Strengthen and enhance the cooperation and knowledge sharing within the research partnership, through the development of a programme of knowledge exchange activities;
b. Bring together complementary expertise and knowledge through international mobility, in order to boost research capacity among participating organisations, progressing understanding of mechanisms for the management of competing memories of disputed territories;
c. Improve the skillsets and career opportunities of participating staff members;
d. Enhance partners’ awareness of the research cultures in different countries and different sectors;
e. Develop a portfolio of impact activities, to disseminate methods, to facilitate the collaborative creation of theoretically and methodologically innovative research outputs, and make these widely available for a range of relevant audiences.
