So would you like to describe a bit your research?
OK, well what I’m looking at at the moment is memories of state socialism, principally
in Germany but also in other countries in Eastern Europe and even though state socialism
ended in those countries more than twenty years ago now, the way that it’s being remembered
and the way that it’s being thought about in those countries is still fiercely debated
and contested.
So some people only remember social security and full employment and then there are other
people who remember the Stasi and repression and total control and infiltration into their
private lives and so on.
And the main thing I’m interested in is testimony, so that is the way that eye-witnesses,
people who lived through that time, talk about their experiences and also the way that that
is recorded into different media forms such as documentary film, memorial museums and
autobiographical writing as well.
So do you think that actually the way people remember changes over time?
Absolutely, yeah, even as an individual the way that you remember is determined by your
position in the present.
So the way you remember childhood experiences or even things that happened yesterday, will
depend on the kind of present moment, who you’re talking to, the political situation
now.
Even the person that you think you are now will change your memories.
So you will keep different pieces of what happened?
Yeah, absolutely.
OK.
So how your typical day, a typical research day, looks like?
I don’t know if there is such a thing as a typical day.
Certainly most days involve reading; there’s an awful lot of reading.
Because the work I do is interdisciplinary, also I read from lots of different disciplines
which can be quite challenging as you’re switching your head round to looking at something
from political science rather than something from Cultural Studies or Media Studies.
I’m also always writing something, whether it be a conference paper, a journal article
or at the moment I’m writing on my second monograph which I hope to finish by the end
of the year.
OK.
That’s quite challenging, a monograph.
Yeah, definitely.
What is it on?
It’s on this kind of mediation of testimony, so looking at autobiographical writing in
two chapters and then memorial museums in two chapters and then a final chapter on documentary
film, and the way that testimony is embedded in those different media and the way that
the media itself changes, the testimony changes what is remembered and how it’s remembered.
Right.
So I suppose in order to study all this it’s very advantageous to actually be able to read
and speak in the language of the people.
Yeah, absolutely.
My first degree was in French and German at the University of Bristol.
My French is decidedly rusty now but yeah, I’ve been kind of continuing with German
since that time and did my MA in German and PhD in German studies.
I’m also learning Romanian at the moment because the next project I want to do is on
comparisons of memorial museums in Romania and in Germany and looking at the way that
they take on kind of transitional justice roles in the absence of, or in the perceived
absence, of the state doing it for them.
Right.
So I need Romanian for that so that I can go and work in archives.
I spent two weeks in Bucharest recently on a language course.
Right.
I mean I’ve been staying in a French speaking canton in Switzerland for five years but my
French is not improving at all!
So what do you find really exciting, you know, why this research is exciting for you?
I think the most exciting thing for me is that it’s happening now, so this is a contemporary
issue, this is happening in Germany, there are these memory debates that are really going
on and I just have to go to Berlin for a week to realise that this is a really hot topic
at the moment.
And it’s not just Germany either, this is going to become – this is an issue and it’s
going to continue to be an issue in terms of European memory and the question of what
role can communism can State socialism really play in a pan-European memory?
And you have memories of the holocaust as well competing with memories of what some
people perceive as genocide under communism.
So those memory battles are going on at a really big level.
Right.
So it’s history in the making.
History in the making and it’s really fiercely political as well.
Of course the process is very important and I suppose it’s not only for, you know, a
restricted field of experts but I suppose it’s important for the public to understand
how this works in order to be able to form the memories based on proper criteria.
I mean how is this dissipated to the public and how is the public affected by this research?
I think one of the other things that I think is quite exciting about my research is that
I can see it – and that’s not always the case for us in Humanities research – I can
see it having a real world impact, in the sense that in my critique of the way things
are being remembered, particularly in memorial museums.
I would hope that critique can be disseminated down to the practitioners in memorial museums
to maybe consider how they can be more inclusive in their memorialisation practices, how they
can try and bring in people who at the moment I don’t think they’re reaching, those
people whose memories of state socialism are based more on social security and full employment,
and feel perhaps disinherited by what the memorial museums are currently offering and
I would hope there could be a real world impact there.
Beyond, you know, within your field, what are you interested in reading and, you know,
it’s kind of a question, what you do outside your research?
How do you relax?
How do I relax?
If you relax.
Yeah, if I have time!
I do like to read but I find myself generally drawn to stuff that is somehow related to
my work.
So reading kind of more literary type texts related to that period, particularly Romania
which is my new kind of fascination, but I think generally to relax I try and take myself
away from the academic things, so it’s about going to the gym and working out or watching
really trashy American TV programmes, that kind of thing, just to kind of switch off
for a while so that you can switch back on again I think is probably what I would do
to relax.
OK, that’s a good practice.
So when did you start working for the University of Birmingham?
In September.
So I was one of the first Birmingham Fellows to arrive.
I think possibly the second to arrive, so I moved straight from Bristol where I had
the first two years of my Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and I took the last year,
so the third year, to Birmingham.
It’s very nearly over which I can’t quite believe, so then moving onto the last four
years of the Birmingham Fellowship after finishing that.
OK, so what do you think about the life in the University because I mean of course, being
at University – I mean I have been for several years in a research centre and it’s a completely
different type of scientific life.
I mean the academia, would you like to describe your experience of the university?
I mean I guess I’ve been in the UK university system for longer than I care to think about
now.
From 1999, so that’s like 13 years, but the thing I like about Birmingham – or one
of the many things I like about Birmingham – is it’s a really big university, which
can be kind of overwhelming but it also means there’s always exciting things going on.
There’s always seminars, you could spend every evening at a seminar if you had the
time.
So I think that’s really great, particularly when you’re interested in an interdisciplinary
way that you can go to seminars on politics or you can go to seminars on German studies
and so on.
I really like that.
Also, I mean I’ve been teaching, I’ve had the opportunity to teach my own research
which is always exciting and you get a lot back from the students and I’ve found the
students here to be great, to be really interested and hard working and come up with exciting
ideas.
So yeah, I’ve really enjoyed my first year.