Indian Network for Memory Studies (INMS), in association with the Centre for Memory Studies (CMS), IIT Madras, is delighted to announce the second international Memory Studies conference, “Memory, Ecology, and Sustainability” to be held from 20-22 September 2023 at IIT Madras in hybrid mode. We are pleased to invite abstracts for the conference.
This hybrid conference seeks to explore the intersections of memory, ecology, and sustainability by examining these issues as ontological, experiential, and cultural categories, while also highlighting how these operate as entanglements. Drawing on Andrew Hoskins’ notion of ecology of memory and Astrid Erll’s study of implicit collective memory while also situating the same as emergent as well as connective conditions, this conference welcomes interventions from scholars, independent researchers, and practitioners about how memory and ecology shape each other in complex ways. It attempts to historicize the various notions of ecology (natural, affective, discursive, technological, digital) and map the same on to the changing experiences of memory apropos of affect, materiality, and intercorporeality. In doing so, the conference aims to connect rituals of remembering and experiencing the environment to systems of sustainability, which assume material, cultural, as well as planetary proportions through big events as well as through slow processes of change.
The theoretical scope and research range of this conference are unique as well as inclusive and the philosophy invested here aims to connect concepts such as memory and materiality with event, ecology, and sustainability in ways which can potentially shape academic research, technological innovations, as well as policy formations.
The Faculty Coordinators are Dr Avishek Parui and Dr Merin Simi Raj (Associate Professors, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, Founding Chairpersons, INMS.
Applicants should send their abstracts (250 words) with a separate bio note (100 words) to memoryecologysustainability@gmail.com before 5 April 2023. Selected participants will be informed by 5 May 2023 after which payable registration will open. Selected participants will need to register by 31 May 2023, details of which will be shared subsequent to selection.
More details may be found in the Call for Papers attached. Kindly make it convenient to circulate this in your department/institute. Please feel free to write to us at memoryecologysustainability@gmail.com for queries and clarifications.