Workshop
Memory in Antiquity Workshop
- Date
- Thursday 27 March 2025 - Friday 28 March 2025
- Address
- Kamerlingh Onnes Building & National Museum of Antiquities
Birmingham-Leiden Strategic Collaboration Fund: Memory in Antiquity
This workshop is part of the Birmingham-Leiden Strategic Collaboration Fund recently awarded to Dr Leire Olabarria (University of Birmingham) and Dr Miriam Müller (Leiden University, LIAS/NINO). Their project, Memory in Antiquity, seeks to create a research group to explore the uses and meanings of memory in ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East. It capitalises on the broad interest in memory in the humanities and social sciences and provides a forum for researchers to reflect on the processes of remembering and forgetting, how these are identifiable in the ancient sources, and what role they play in the construction of ideas about the past. Related to contemporary experiences such as migration, this project speaks to various audiences and will translate the lessons from the past into an engaged dialogue about the future.
Upcoming event: On 24 and 25 April 2025, the group will meet at the University of Birmingham to explore material and linguistic aspects of the process of forgetting.
Leiden Workshop: 27 & 28 March 2025
Ten workshop participants from Birmingham, Leiden, the Netherlands and Egypt will engage around the concept of remembering. Iconographic representations and the construction of lived experience in ritual landscapes all provide productive case studies to illustrate approaches to this topic.
Programme
Thursday, March 27th
Location: Leiden University, Faculty of Law, Kamerling Onnes Building (KOG), A0.08
| 14.00-14.15 | Introduction |
| 14.15-15.15 | Memory makers, memory breakers: The politics of cultural memory - Nour Munawar, University of Amsterdam (keynote) |
| 15.15-16.00 | Coffee break |
| 16.15-16.30 | An ongoing investment: Collective remembrance and added burials at Tomb QH25/26 at Qubbet al-Hawā’ - Reuben Hutchinson-Wong, University of Birmingham |
| 16.30-17.00 | Memory, embodiment, and genealogies of place: Constructing spaces of memory at Saqqara - Leire Olabarria, University of Birmingham |
| 17.00-18.30 | Reception |
Friday, March 28th
Location: National Museum of Antiquities, Nehalenniazaal, second floor
| 10.15-10.45 | Building family histories at Tell el-Dab’a/Avaris: Migrant memories of a faraway past - Miriam Müller, Leiden University |
| 10.45-11.15 | Serabit el-Khadim as a memorial of the ancient Egyptian missions - Sherouk Shehada, Helwan University |
| 11.15-12.00 | Coffee break |
| 12.00-13.00 | Museum tour for speakers |
| 13.00-14.00 | Lunch break for speakers |
| 14.00-14.45 | Belonging to the land: Cultivation, curation, and memory - Diana Spencer, University of Birmingham |
| 14.45-16.45 |
Discussion with short presentations:
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