How has digitalization changed the way we remember personally and collectively? Through their omnipresence, digital applications and infrastructures seem to be reshaping memory culture and practices around the globe. Mobile devices and cloud services enable individuals to access images, texts, and video recordings from the past anywhere and anytime. Collections are being digitalized and made more accessible. During the Corona Pandemic, museums offered virtual tours. Governments are also using digital tools increasingly to shape authoritative cultural heritage and public discourses on identity and history. 

Digitalization does not only facilitate a greater diversity of memories and voices. Digitalization also challenges conventions and can enables manipulation and selection of content. The consequences with which the intersection between technologies and cultures has been set in motion can be best discussed by comparing memory & heritage practices in different societies and world regions. How is the personal ability to remember changing and which materials are becoming new and differently accessible for remembering? What kind of influence do platforms and social media have on forms of memory in rural Africa or hyper-urban China? How does digital creativity differ in remembering in Europe, Latin America and Africa? How do digital tools enable us to perceive everyday culture on the one hand and global interconnections such as colonialism, climate change, and geopolitics on the other hand? Does the relationship between cultures of memory and digital technologies differ significantly or are they similar in African, American, European, and Asian countries?

• 11 April 2023 | Platformization of Memory | Dr. Rik Smit | Link
• 25 April 2023 | Discussing the Role and Potential of Museum Online Exhibitions and Collections | Dr. Leandro Matthews Cascon | Link
• 02 May 2023 | Memory, Reception and Research in Tibet: Uses and Misuses of the Digital | Prof. Dr. Robert Barnett | Link
• 09 May 2023 | Smell Routes. How Digital Collections can held to Create Pathways to Olfactory Heritage  | Prof. Dr. Inger Leemans | Link
• 16 May 2023 | Challenges and Opportunities for Indigenous Peoples' Rights in Bridging Heritage Cosmopolitics and Digital Technologies | Dr. Francesco Orlandi | Link
• 23 May 2023 | Digital Reconstruction of Concentration Camps in VR | Dr. Steffi de Jong | Link
• 06 June 2023 | Digitalization of Red Memories in China | Dr. Rui Kunze | Link
• 13 June 2023 | Digital Metaphor Analysis as a Tool for Investigating Tibetan Buddhist Lineages | Dr. Jan-Ulrich Sobisch | Link
• 27 June 2023 | Materialization of the Immaterial. Digital Mediation of Intangible Cultural Heritage | Prof. Dr. Patricia Rahemipur & Kathrin Grotz | Link
• 04 July 2023 | Digital Archives and Collections. Creating Online Access to Indian Cultural Heritage | Prof. Dr. Katja Müller | Link
• 11 July 2023 | Short Videos as Memory Practice of the Quotidian: Remembering with Kuaishou | Prof. Dr. Mi You | Link

All events will take place from to 6:15 p.m. - 7:45 p.m. in lecture hall IV of the main building of the University of Bonn.

The lecture series is hybrid, which means that participation is possible both in person and digitally. If you would like to participate via Zoom, please register early by sending an email to kranzant@uni-bonn.de. If you would like to attend in person, no registration is required.

The interdisciplinary lecture series of can be attended as part of the interdisciplinary practice area (überfachlicher Praxisbereich) of the Faculty of Philosophy. More information can be found at BASIS.