Eighth Annual Conference of the Memory Studies Association (MSA)

The Memory Studies Association (MSA) welcomes attendee registration for its eighth annual conference, to be held in person from 18 to 20 July 2024 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima, Peru.

Although payment guarantees you a place at the conference, we still need extra details from you to complete conference registration so please click the button above, choose the payment option that best suits your situation and complete the conference registration form details.

The conference program will follow shortly, so please check back at the MSA site regularly for updates.

The theme of the 2024 conference will be “Memories in Transit”. People build memories that transition between places, spaces, groups, generations, and temporalities; between social struggles, political processes, and identities; via various repertoires and in different media formats. Memories in Transit is an invitation to reflect on the itineraries of these memories, their heterogeneity, and permanent transformations. As memories circulate between people and places, they are implicated in many social phenomena including processes of inequality, racism, exclusion, and migration. On the one hand, memories help sustain various forms of violence and authoritarianism. On the other hand, memories represent an important resource in the fight against injustices.

We live in times of intense mobility caused by natural disasters, globalization, forced displacements, dispossession of territories, violence, and climate change. Mobility shapes contemporary societies, setting in motion memories that travel in oral, gestural, sonic, sensory, textual, or digital formats. Mobility produces new repertoires of meaning including forgetfulness, denial, and oblivion. How much of the past is reflected in new transmedia spaces? How do past events take shape in the present? How much does it change? How do we talk about truth in an era of fake news? Memories in Transit is also an invitation to think about the return of phenomena we believed to have overcome (think about “Nunca Más” in the Southern Cone), such as populism, authoritarianism, and systematic violations of human rights that haunt societies, erode democracies and which are now prevalent in our countries.

The conference will take place at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, which is located in the city of Lima in Peru. A Cultural Program of events will run alongside the academic program, where we will be cooperating closely with local memory activists, cultural partners, artists, and heritage sites.