The aim of the conference is to draw together people working in a wide range of academic fields to explore how we record, remember and commemorate the major traumatic events of the 20th century (from the Boer wars to the massacres in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia), and what are the long term social, cultural and political consequences of tragic events that involved large numbers of people.

Key speakers:
Gunnar S. Paulsson,author of Secret City. Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1939-1945. Yale University Press, 2002
Vieda Skultans, author of The Testimony of Lives. Narrative and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia. Routledge, 1998
Janina Struk, author of Photographing the Holocaust. I.B. Taurus, 2004