Call for Papers: Post-Socialism, Migration and Memory in Britain and Beyond

What happens to memories of state-socialism and of post-communist transition when its carriers move across borders? How do individuals and communities grapple with the legacies of regimes in host societies with different kinds of legacies? As a culmination point of the research project “Post-Socialist Britain?: Memory, Representation and Political Identity amongst German, Polish and Ukrainian Immigrants in the UK” (https://postsocialistbritain.bham.ac.uk/), funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council and led by Professor Sara Jones (University of Birmingham), we are organising a series of virtual webinars in April and May 2023. These will be co-hosted by the Memory Studies Association and featured in its dMSA line-up, so that they will be available as livestreams, as well as via the MSA Youtube Channel. We envision that selected contributions will be featured in a special issue, edited by Dr Charlotte Galpin (University of Birmingham) and Prof Jenny Wüstenberg (Nottingham Trent University), who are Co-Investigators on the project.

We very much welcome proposals for papers of approx. 15 minutes that address the above questions and/or the following (or related) questions:

• How do processes and experiences of migration affect political identity and behaviour in host countries?
• How do different debates about the past and their dominance in different countries interact through the process of migration?
• How does post-socialism interlink with post-colonialism in realms of remembrance?
• How do narratives about populism, migration and memory interact in migratory settings?
• Is there a link between collective memory, migration, and support for, or resistance to, far-right and right-wing populist movements?
• What has changed in terms of the memory-migration nexus in the context of key events such as Brexit, Covid -19, the climate crisis, or the war in Ukraine?

We are especially keen to receive comparative and interdisciplinary contributions.

Please submit an abstract (250 words) and short bio (200 words) in a single Word or PDF file to Dr Charlotte Galpin (c.a.galpin@bham.ac.uk) and Prof Jenny Wüstenberg (jenny.wustenberg@ntu.ac.uk). We are also happy to answer any questions pre-submission. We welcome submissions from people at all career stages, including PhD students and early career academics. We particularly encourage submissions from Black, Asian and minority ethnic academics as well as those belonging to other groups marginalised in academia.

Timeline

Deadline for submission: 28th February 2023

Notification of decision: by 7th March 2023

Webinars will take place between April and May 2023. We will work with the selected speakers to find a suitable slot in this timeframe.

Special issue submission deadline will be in late 2023.