Lecture: The Witness and the Archive: Digitising Memories of Childhood Abuse in Ireland

This summer semester, the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform will continue its lecture series New Frontiers in Memory Studies. On Tuesday, 27 June 2017, Emilie Pine (University College Dublin) will visit Goethe University and give a lecture titled “The Witness and the Archive: Digitising Memories of Childhood Abuse in Ireland”. The event will take place from 12 to 2 pm in IG 1.414.

Frankfurt, 27 June, 12-2 pm, IG 1.414

Abstract:

In this lecture, Emilie Pine will consider the ways that digital approaches to archives can tell new stories and act as a belated form of witnessing. The lecture focuses on the University College Dublin project Industrial Memories, which digitally re-reads the 2009 Ryan Report on institutional child abuse in Ireland, using approaches such as text analytics and mobile apps to open up the archive. This document is one of the most important publications in the history of the Irish state. It is also one of the least read. Pine considers how digital approaches might change that.

The project Industrial Memories is funded by a major New Horizons grant from the Irish Research Council, 2015-18.

Emilie Pine is Associate Professor of Modern Drama at University College Dublin. She is Editor of the Irish University Review and Director of the Irish Memory Studies Network. She has recently launched the mobile app & website resource Echoes from the Past and has published widely in the field of Irish studies and memory studies, including The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture (Palgrave, 2011).

Video