Erin Cory: Putting Down Roots in Precarity. Some Thoughts on Memory, Media, and Urban Space

Welcome to our next K3 seminar. It will be held by Erin Cory, who is a post-doctoral researcher in Media and Communication Studies and Refugee Studies at Malmö University. She will talk about her previously conducted PhD and the work she will do as post-doc. It will be held on Wednesday, February 15, 10.15-12.00 in The Open Studio on the fifth floor of Niagara (Room NIC 0541).

The title of the talk is Putting Down Roots in Precarity:  Some Thoughts on Memory, Media, and Urban Space

Here is an abstract:

My work is generally concerned with how people use media, broadly conceived, to tell their stories and to connect these stories with others across time and space.  In this seminar, I will both discuss previous research and present preliminary thoughts on the work I hope to do at Malmö. 

My doctoral thesis, based on fieldwork in Beirut, builds on the theoretical insights of memory studies, cultural geography, and performance studies to introduce the idea of “re- membering.” I use this term to describe how artists and activists engage memories of civil war-era Beirut (1975-1991) in their expressive practices and humanitarian initiatives, in order to publicly communicate the common experiences of otherwise divided (spatially, culturally, and politically) groups.

My proposed project at K3 examines the media praxis of refugee youth as they negotiate bifurcated identities between their homelands and their adopted countries.  Employing media and grounded ethnography, the project aims to offer an intimate look at communities and identities that are in the process of unfolding.

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