Dr. Birte Wassenberg, University of Strasbourg, in an interview on memory politics. This interview is part of the interview series " Expert Voices on Memory Politics" realized with the financial support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Kanada and Erasmus+ Program of the European Union.
The interviews were recorded during the October 2022 conference "Addressing the Past - Shaping the Future.

Dr. Wassenberg explores how memory politics can have positive and negative implications for democracy and social inclusion. How memory politics is practiced depends on who is memorizing and what specifically is remembered. If memory is positively linked to democracy, it is specifically used to remember difficult periods of the past. The general population is engaged in discussions with the government to explore, interpret, and deal with the past. In a democratic arena, debate about the past is embraced to find paths towards reconciliation. On the other hand, a negative link in memory politics is when authoritarian states and extremist political parties use memory politics to renationalize discourse. Oftentimes, ‘us’ is pitted against the ‘other’, which tends to create anti-democratic dialogue and singular interpretations of history. Dr. Wassenberg also presents how in times of ‘crisis’, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the migration crisis in Europe, a tendency exists to glorify the past and say “it was better”. Transposing history to the present is for him, however, a ‘thin solution’ to unique challenges of the present.

EUCAnet (Europe Canada Network) is a hub for experts primarily located in Canada that work on European and Canadian current issues from a transatlantic perspective. These experts offer commentary and expertise and are available for media interviews and public talks. We are a public outreach platform – that makes scholarly knowledge available and meaningful to the public in times when the need for evidence based knowledge and public debate is crucial. Our goal is to foster the Canada Europe Transatlantic Dialogue with the aim of supporting the process of informing public policy making.

We are also supporting the outreach activities of the European Community Studies Association in Canada (ECSA-C).
Focus on : European Studies, Transatlantic Studies, Global Studies, Issues of Democracy, Populism, Memory Politics, Migration.

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