1st Edition

Future Memory Practices Across Institutions, Communities, and Modalities

Edited By Gertraud Koch, Rachel Charlotte Smith Copyright 2025
248 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

248 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

248 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Future Memory Work addresses a crucial challenge in contemporary pluralistic societies: the organisation of open, participatory and socially inclusive memory practices in digital media ecologies. It brings a novel relational approach to future memory work across institutions, people, and modalities. Advancing inter- and transdisciplinary research and rich empirical cases from across Europe... Read more

1. Future Memory Work: A relational approach to social inclusion in digitalised media ecologies

Gertraud Koch, Rachel Charlotte Smith

Part I: Memory institutions

2. Shifting from ‘inside-out’ to ‘outside in’: Envisioning ways of structurally integrating participatory principles in museums

Susanne Boersma, Cassandra Kist, Franziska Mucha, Inge Zwart and Maria Economou

3. Situating participation in the backstage: Infrastructural settings impacting museum work

Quoc-Tan Tran

4. Ethical practices in participatory memory work - Examples from the Museum Europäischer Kulturen in Berlin

Susanne Boersma and Elisabeth Tietmeyer

Part II: People and groups

5. Pluriversal Futures: Design Anthropology for Contested Memory Making at the Margins

Rachel Charlotte Smith, Heike Winschiers-Theophilus, Asnath Kambunga

6. Conducting Bereavement Interviews: Methodological Reflections on Talking About Death, Grief, and Memory

Lorenz Widmaier and Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert

Part : Memory modalities

7. Memory modalities: explorations into the socio-material arrangements of the past at the present for the future

Jennifer Krueckeberg, Quoc-Tan Tran, Dydimus Zengenene, Angeliki Tzouganatou, Isto Huvila and Gertraud Koch

8. Memory loss: Youth and the fragility of personal digital remembering

Jennifer Krueckeberg

Part IV: Tools and Approaches for Future Memory Work

9. Towards a relational approach to social impact measurement of Participatory Memory Work: New concepts for future memory work

Samantha Lutz, Nils Geib, Peter Schubert, Gertraud Koch

10. Towards a toolbox for future envisioning memory practices

Quoc-Tan Tran, Susanne Boersma, Anne S. Chahine, Cassandra Kist, Elina Moraitopoulou, Franziska Mucha, Angeliki Tzouganatou, Lorenz Widmaier, Inge Zwart, Asnath Paula Kambunga and Isto Huvila

11. Epilogue: Future Memory Work

Ton Otto

Biography

Gertraud Koch is Professor of Anthropological Studies in Culture and History at the University of Hamburg. Her research focus is on digital anthropology, cultural heritage and memory making, anthropology of work, and digital methods.

Rachel Charlotte Smith is Associate Professor of Human-Centred Design at Aarhus University. Her research focus is on digital and sustainable transformations, future heritage and memory making, through design anthropology and participatory design.