Related projects
Current cooperation:
Nordic voices: The use of oral history and personal memories in public history settings (2022-2024)
NORDIC VOICES seeks to increase the use of oral histories, life narratives and personal memories in Nordic cultural institutions by collaborating with leading experts from both academia and various cultural institutions.
Previous projects this team has worked on:
ETNOMUUS 2020: Collecting, using and preserving Estonian tangible ethnographic heritage in museums (June 2020 – January 2021)
The study was conducted by the Department of Ethnology of the University of Tartu. The customer of the study – the National Heritage Board of Estonia, formulated the objective as follows:
The task of the study is to analyze the collection, use and preservation of Estonian tangible ethnographic heritage in museums with the aim of providing a thorough overview of the current state of ‘ethnographic heritage’ and the process of its formation in Estonian museums. The study combines quantitative and qualitative methods: statistical data analysis, questionnaires with closed and open questions, semi-structured interviews, content analysis of documents. The quantitative and qualitative results of the project will be used in the knowledge-based design of the state collection policy in the museum field and in the development of the museum heritage repository project.
Researchers: Ene Kõresaar, Jana Reidla and Kirsti Jõesalu; processing of quantitative data: Hiljar Tammela
SFLKU15130. Livingmemories: Living together with difficult memories and diverse identities (October 2015 − December 2017)
University of Tartu, Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of Culture Studies and Arts (partner), University of Tartu, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Institute of Cultural Research (partner); Financier: European Commission. ERA.Net RUS Plus.
The multi-disciplinary project focused on difficult memories and diverse identities related with conflicts and protest movements in Russia, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Germany and Turkey. It addressed the vital questions every society faces after a conflict: How can people live together after violent conflicts and with traumatic memories? How are myths, symbols and memories created and re-created? How is it possible to allow difficult and different memories instead of controlling or Silencing them?
The project explored tools for reconciliation, promoting dialogue, processes of engagement arid disengagement in a comparative perspective. It brought together methodological discussions from oral history research, cultural memory studies and the study on contemporary protest movements.
Working group: Ene Kõresaar (principal investigator), Terje Anepaio, Kirsti Jõesalu and Laura Jamsja.
About Livingmemories Project at the Estonian Research Information System
MFLKU13183R. SPeCTReSS : Social PracticE Cultural Trauma and REestablishing Solid Sovereignties (January 2014 − December 2017)
University of Tartu, Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of Culture Studies and Arts (partner), University of Tartu, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Institute of Cultural Research (partner); Financier: European Commission
The objective of this project was to build upon, solidify and condense the recently initiated, but as yet informal, relationships between leading research institutions representing different regions and historical traditions in order to conduct joint research and participate in knowledge exchange to identify new paradigms for understanding how national identities are disrupted and formed by the traumas of history. In contemporary scholarship, much discussion of national identity is framed in a context of something specific that has come before: post-colonial, post-war, post-apartheid, post-communism, etc. More useful, however, than such contested terms as nationalism or patriotism, is that of cultural trauma, “culturally defined and interpreted shock to the cultural tissue of a society.” SPeCTReSS pursued this revised notion not just in theoretical and historical terms, but focused on the cultural production of affected communities.
Working group: Ene Kõresaar (principal investigator), Kirsti Jõesalu.
ETF8190 “Practices of memory: continuities and discontinuities of remembering the 20th century” (January 2010 – December 2014)
University of Tartu, Faculty of Social Sciences, Financier: Estonian Science Foundation
The aim of the Project was to investigate the interrelatedness of continuity and discontinuity of the practices of memory of the 20th century. A hypothesis was presented that continuities and discontinuities of memory are not only consecutive but act in the cultural whole in a parallel, simultaneous and syncretic manner, relationships between them becoming actualized under certain conditions (influenced by certain experiential and identity-political processes affecting the formation of historical images, history of remembering and contexts of cultural memory). The research focused on the problems of dynamic and multilevel relationship of continuity and discontinuity as well as on the genre specificity of its articulation. The results of the project enable differentiated view on Estonian (and Baltic) post-communist memory culture and its the experiential trajectories.
Working group: Ene Kõresaar (principal investigator), Kirsti Jõesalu
About the Project at the Estonian Research Information System
ETF6687 “Places of Memory and Cultures of Remembrance” (January 2006 – December 2009)
University of Tartu, Faculty of Philosophy; Financier: Estonian Science Foundation
The study focuses on places of memory and cultures of remembrance in the 21th century Estonia. Places of memory are broadly understood as cultural phenomena that are collectively and consciously or unconsciously linked to the national past and identity. The places of memory selected for this research are: events of national significance (the IIWW, ESSR); culture phenomena (tradition); institutions (museum). The main question posed in this study is about practices, system and logic of re-creating these places of memory as well as their interrelatedness through national history, (political) culture and contemporary global conceptual network. Simultaneously, it is a question of cultures of remembrance, i.e. plurality of relations and representations of the past. The study of specific cultures of remembrance focuses on questions of how society is “charged with memory”, what are the interests of different groups, what are the techniques and ways of representation of the past. Memory and culture are discoursively understood in this study. Methodologically the study proceeds from the theory of communicative and cultural memory of A.&J. Assmann as well as its elaborations within cultural and social studies.
Working group: Ene Kõresaar (principal investigator), Kirsti Jõesalu etc.
About Project at the Estonian Research Information System
