In this lecture Dr Aline SIERP scrutinizes the EU’s attempts to create an overarching European memory framework. By analyzing different EU politics of memory initiatives on the one hand and national reactions to them on the other, she asks whether there can be such a thing as a European memory. She argues that a European perspective attempts to break the mould of single national perspectives by integrating them into a common identity and value framework. Through the promotion of social interactions on the subnational level and the creation of a communicative arena, the EU acts as a facilitator for the transnationalization of debates on memory.
Schedule
17:00 - Welcome by Rector Jörg MONAR
17: 15 - Introductory words by German Ambassador Eckart CUNTZ
17: 25 - Lecture by Dr Aline SIERP
Comments by Dr Philippe PERCHOC
18:15 - Discussion and Q&A with the public
Speakers
Aline SIERP is Assistant Professor in European Studies at Maastricht University (NL). She holds a PhD in Comparative European Politics and History from the University of Siena (IT). Before joining the University of Maastricht, Aline Sierp worked as researcher at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site (DE). Her research interests cover collective memory, questions of identity and European integration. She is the author of History, Memory and Transeuropean Identity: Unifying Divisions (Routledge, 2014).
Philippe PERCHOC is a postdoc researcher at the InBev EU-Russia Chair at Université Catholique de Louvain and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe. He works on memory as a political issue in the EU institutions.