Dr Aline Sierp (A.)

Constructing the Past, Shaping the Future. From a National to a European Memory Framework

The project aims at questioning the presupposition voiced by many historians and political scientists that political experiences in Europe continue to be interpreted in terms of national history and that a European community of remembrance still does not exist. Its central claim is that despite apparent differences in the memory constructions in different countries some kind of convergence on the European level can be discerned.

The underlying scope of the project is to examine if the increasing efforts of the EU to create a European memory framework are supported by corresponding developments on the national level. Following from that the question is raised if this might justify a greater involvement of European institutions in a field that until now has been the exclusive domain of the nation states. It thus analyses an aspect of European integration that is still under-researched, namely the integration not only of European histories but also of European memories, where experiences of liberation and resistance stand next to the trauma of aerial bombardments and the recollection of German and Soviet occupation.

By tracing the evolution of specific memory cultures in different countries and the impact of structural changes upon them, the project investigates wider democratic processes concerning particularly the conservation and transmission of values and the definition of identity on different levels. Through the triangulation of agents of memory construction, constraints and opportunities and actual portrayals of the past, it explores the difficulties faced by a multinational entity in reaching some kind of consensus on such a sensitive subject as history.

PROJECT FUNDING

• When the Past Determines the Future: The Role of Memory in Foreign Policy Decisions. NWO Open Competition SSH XS grant, individual research grant by the Dutch Research Council (2024-2025, €50.000)
• Contested Narratives, Mnemonic Activism and European Politics in Times of Crisis. NWO Aspasia grant, individual research grant by the Dutch Research Council (2022-2027, 120.000€)
• CHOS - Contested Histories Onsite (2021 - 2023, Europe for Citizens programme, lead applicant, 100.000€)
• HISTCOM3 – History of the European Commission 1986-2004 (2015-2019, coordinated by the EUI, participant, 800.000€)
• E-WORDS - Europeans win ostracism: from remembrance to a dialogue society (2017-2019, Europe for Citizens programme, co-applicant, 100.000€)
• European Parliament Public Tender EPRS/BIB/SER/14/123N, Study on the 25th Anniversary of Democratic Change in Central and Eastern Europe (2015, sole applicant, 14.500€)
• COST Project ISTME In search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (2012-2016, coordinated by Lund University, 600.000€)
• International Visitors’ Survey, Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site (2012, coordinator, 17.600€)

Books

• History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity: Unifying Divisions. London/New York: Routledge (2014)
• Dividing United Europe. From Crisis to Fragmentation? London/New York: Routledge (2019, with C. Karner)
• Agency in Transnational Memory Politics. Oxford: Berghahn (2020,  with J. Wüstenberg)

Peer-reviewed journal articles

• Memory, post-fascism and the far-right. Italian Political Science Review (2024, with L. Ortiz Cabrero)
• Le Politiche della memoria dell’Unione Europea. Qualestoria – Rivista di Storia Contemporanea, XLIX, No. 2, 19-33 (2022)
• Acting at the margins – Italian mnemonic activism in the European Parliament. Politique européenne, 71, 110-141 (2021, with L. Ortiz Cabrero)
• EU Memory Politics and Europe’s Forgotten Colonial Past. Interventions, 22(6), 386-702 (2020)
• The European Union as a Memory Region. Contemporanea. Rivista di Storia dell’800 e del ‘900, 23(1), 128-132 (2020)
• A Contested Latecomer - the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism. History & Memory, 32(1), 9-33 (2020)
• Entre el debate y el diálogo – La Unión Europea como mediadora de memoria. Revista Científica de Información y Communicación, 15, 29-55 (2018)
• 1939 versus 1989 – A Missed Opportunity to Create a European Lieu de Memoire?, East European Politics & Societies, 31(3), 439-455 (2017)
• National Stereotypes in the Context of the European Crisis. National Identities, 19(1), 1-9 (2017, with C. Karner)
• Drawing Lessons from the Past – Mapping Change in Central and South-Eastern Europe. East European Politics & Societies, 30(1), 3-9 (2016)
• Linking the Local and the Transnational: Rethinking Memory Politics in Europe. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 23(3), 321-329 (2015, with J. Wüstenberg)
• Nostalgia for Times Past. On the Uses and Abuses of the Ostalgie Phenomenon in Eastern Germany. Contemporary European Studies, 4(2), 47-60 (2009)
• Minority Language Protection in Italy. Linguistic minorities and the Media. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 4(4), 303-321. (2008)

Editorships

• Taking Stock of Memory Studies [Special Issue]. Memory Studies, 16(6) (2023, edited with J. Olick and J. Wüstenberg)
• Museums and Monuments: Memorials of Violent Pasts in Urban Spaces [Special Issue]. History & Memory 32(1) (2020, edited with U. Capdepon and J. Strauss)
• Dividing united Europe. Stereotypes, prejudices and the European (economic) crisis [Special Issue]. National Identities, 19(1) (2017, edited with C. Karner)
• Europe’s Changing Lessons from the Past [Special Issue]. East European Politics & Societies, 30(1) (2016)
• Transnational Memory Politics in Europe [Special Issue]. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 23(3) (2015, edited with J. Wüstenberg)

Contributions to books

• Die Erinnerungspolitik der EU und Europa’s vergessene koloniale Vergangenheit. In J. Mackert and I. Pappe (Eds.) Siedlerkolonialismus – Grundlagentexte des Paradigmas und aktuelle Analysen. Baden-Baden: Nomos (2024)
• Europeanising memory: The European Union’s politics of memory. In M. Mälksoo (Ed.) Handbook on the Politics of Memory. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing (2023)
• Memory Studies – Development, Debates and Directions. In M. Berek et al. (Eds.) Handbuch Sozialwissenschaftliche Gedächtnisforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS (2021)
• Las Politicas Europeas de la Memoria: Un Ejemplo de Conflicto Productivo? In J. Guixé, J.A. Carballés and R. Conesa (Eds.). Diez Años de Leyes y Politicas de Memoria (2007-2017). Madrid: Catarata (2019)
• Memory, Identity and a Painful Past: Contesting the Former Dachau Concentration Camp. In M.T. Starzmann and J.R. Roby (Eds.). Excavating Memory: Sites of Remembering and Forgetting. Gainesville: University Press of Florida (2016)
• La lotta italiana con la storia e l'europeizzazione della memoria nazionale. In L. Cecchini and H. Lauge Hansen (Eds.). Conflitti della memoria/Memoria dei conflitti. Modelli narrativi della memoria intergenerazionale in Italia e Spagna. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press (2015)
• Integrating Europe - integrating memories. The EU’s politics of memory since 1945. In L. Bond and J. Rapson (Eds.). The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory between and beyond borders. Berlin: De Gruyter (2014)
• The end of the memory war? From a national to a European memory framework. In O. Gyarfasova and K. Liebhart (Eds.). Constructing and Communicating EUrope. Berlin/Vienna: LIT Verlag (2014)
• Italy's struggle with history and the europeanisation of national memory. In U. Engel, M. Middell and S. Troebst (Eds.). Erinnerungskulturen in transnationaler Perspektive. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag (2012)

Other publications

• Introduction: Taking Stock of Memory Studies. Memory Studies, 16(6), 1399-1406 (2023, with J. Olick and J. Wüstenberg)
• History, Memory and the Construction of a European Identity. Rivista di Diritti Comparati, 1/2023, 58-67 (2023)
• Book Review: Speccher, T. (2016). Die Darstellung des Holocausts in Italien und Deutschland. Erinnerungsarchitektur – Politischer Diskurs – Ethik. Bielefeld: Transcript. In Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, 13, 392 (2018).
• Book Review: Hoerber, T (2014). A Converging Post-War European Discourse: War Experience, Changing Security Concepts, and Research and Education. Lanham: Lexington Books. In Journal of Common Market Studies, 55(1), 153-154 (2018).
• The Memory Studies Association: Ambitions and an invitation. Memory Studies, 10(4), 490-494 (2017, with J. Olick and J. Wüstenberg)
• The Contemporary Presence of the Past: Memory Studies in the Council for European Studies and Beyond. In EuropeNow (Special Issue: Memory and the Politics of the Past: New Research and Innovation), Issue 6 (2017, with J. Wüstenberg).
• Sierp, A. (2015). Democratic Change in Central and Eastern Europe 1989-90. The European Parliament and the end of the Cold War. Brussels: European Parliament.
• Sierp, A. (2015). Book Review: Cento Bull, A. and Cooke, P. (2013). Ending Terrorism in Italy. London: Routledge. In Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 12(1), 122-123.
• Sierp, A. (2014) Book Review: L. van Middelaar (2013) The Passage to Europe, how a Continent became a Union. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. In Journal of Common Market Studies, 52 (1), 180-181.
• Sierp, A. (2014) Book Review: McCrone, D. and McPherson, G. (2009) National Days. Constructing and Mobilising National Identity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. In National Identities, 16 (1), 182-184.
• Sierp, A. (2014) Book Review: Clifford, R. (2014) Commemorating the Holocaust. The Dilemmas of Remembrance in France and Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. In Historical Justice and Memory Research Network.
• Sierp, A. (2014) Book Review: Resede, E. & Budryte, D. (Eds.) (2014). Memory and Trauma in International Relations. Theories, cases and debates. New York: Routledge. In E-International Relations.
• Sierp, A. (2013) Book Review: Stübler, D. (2010) Revolution in Italien. Sächsische Diplomaten und Journalisten über Italien zwischen 1789 und 1871. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. In CURIOSITAS, 12-13, 283-284.
• Sierp, A. (2013) Book Review: McGrattan, C. (2013) Memory, Politics and Identity: Haunted by History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. In Historical Justice and Memory Research Network.
• Sierp, A. (2009) Book Review: Fligstein, N. (2009) Euroclash: The EU, European Identity and the Future of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. In Journal of Common Market Studies, 47 (3), 681.
• Sierp, A. (2010) A question of impact – EU citizenship without citizens?. Open Citizenship, 1 (1), 6-27.
• Sierp, A. (2009) Book Review: Battini, M. (2007) The Missing Italian Nuremberg: Cultural Amnesia and Postwar Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. In Political Studies Review, 7 (3), 428.
• Sierp, A. (2009) Book Review: Zehfuss, M. (2007) Wounds of Memory: The Politics of War in Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In Political Studies Review, 7 (3), 429.
• Sierp, A. (2004) Actors and Issues in Quality Assurance in Higher Education in Europe, DGIV Background paper. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.