Memory Studies Conference

"The Place of Memory and the Memory of Place"

International Conference

21-22 June 2025: London / Online

organised by

London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Memory is central to contemporary life and serves as a key to personal, social and cultural identity. Scholars from diverse disciplines — philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geography, architecture, psychology, literature and the interdisciplinary field of "place studies" — have explored memory and its intersections with place. Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire (places of memory) describes sites where "memory crystallises and secretes itself," emerging through the interplay of memory and history. These sites can be material, symbolic, or functional — or a combination of all three — and embody the essence of collective memory.

This conference seeks to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and new conversations within memory and place studies. We invite contributions from a variety of disciplines, focussing on topics that include but are not limited to:

  • Monuments and sites of trauma
  • Childhood homes and personal memory
  • City spaces, sightseeing and urban memory
  • Burial places: graves, cemeteries and necropoleis
  • Ruins, abandoned spaces and forgotten places
  • Heterotopias and heterochronies
  • Toponymy and the study of place names
  • Cartography, mapmaking and memory mapping
  • Sacred spaces, pilgrimage sites and places of worship
  • Borders, borderlands, and contested spaces
  • Literary and artistic representations of memory and place
  • Memory and migration: journeys, exiles, and diasporas
  • Memory in digital spaces: virtual worlds and cyber-memorials
  • Memory and landscape: natural sites, forests and waterscapes
  • The architecture of memory: memorial design and commemorative spaces
  • Memory and temporality: the role of time in place attachment
  • Nostalgia, belonging and cultural heritage

This conference invites scholars from various fields of study to present their research. By bridging disciplines, we aim to deepen our understanding of how memory shapes — and is shaped by — place.

Paper proposals up to 250 words should be sent by 1 March 2025 to: memory@lcir.co.uk. Download Paper proposal form.

Registration fee (online participation) – 90 GBP

Registration fee (physical participation) – 150 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London