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Professor Jenny Wüstenberg's Inaugural Lecture

Seeking refuge, protecting biodiversity, reviving democracy: how stories about the past can help us respond to current crises

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In her inaugural lecture, Jenny Wüstenberg will make the case that telling stories about our collective past is essential to confronting the polycrisis we face today. Drawing on her research over the last decade, she will consider how current responses to refugees, programmes to separate families, or the extraordinary rate of species extinction can be addressed by remembering differently in democratic societies.

  • From: Thursday 13 March 2025, 6 pm
  • To: Thursday 13 March 2025, 7.30 pm
  • Registration: 5.30 pm
  • Location: Lecture Theatre 5, Newton building, City Campus, Nottingham, NG1 4BU
  • Booking deadline: Thursday 13 March 2025, 3.00 pm
  • Download this event to your calendar
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Event details

In her inaugural lecture, Jenny Wüstenberg will make the case that telling stories about our collective past is essential to confronting the polycrisis we face today. Drawing on her research over the last decade, she will consider how current responses to refugees, programmes to separate families, or the extraordinary rate of species extinction can be addressed by remembering differently in democratic societies. To tackle our most pressing challenges, we need to look beyond spectacular headlines and capture what happens slowly, or underneath the radar. Memory studies, and the humanities more broadly, must therefore play a central role in policy-making.

Biography

Jenny Wüstenberg is a Professor of History & Memory Studies at Nottingham Trent University and Co-Chair of AIMS@NTU (Advancing Interdisciplinary Memory Studies). Before joining NTU in 2019, she was a DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at York University in Toronto (2016-19), a researcher at the Independent Academic Commission at the German Federal Ministry of Justice for the Critical Study of the National Socialist Past (2014), a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies (2012-13), and a Professorial Lecturer at the School of International Service, American University in Washington D.C. (2011-2012). She received her PhD in Government & Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2010.

Jenny is the co-founder and past Co-President of the Memory Studies Association (2016-23), Chair of the COST Action on “Slow Memory: Transformative Practices in Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change” (2021-25), and Knowledge Exchange Fellow for HERA-funded projects on crisis (2025-28). She is the author of Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany (Cambridge UP 2017, in German LIT Verlag/Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung 2020) and the forthcoming Slow Memory: Remembering Gradual Change in an Accelerating World (Oxford University Press). She is the co-editor, amongst others, of Agency in Transnational Memory Politics (with Aline Sierp, Berghahn 2020), the Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism (with Yifat Gutman, 2023), and De-Commemoration: Making Sense of Contemporary Calls to Remove Statues and Rename Places (with Sarah Gensburger, in English with Berghahn and in French with Fayard in 2023), and Dynamics, Mediation, Mobilization: Doing Memory Studies with Ann Rigney (with Astrid Erll and Susanne Knittel, 2025). Her research interests concern the contentious politics of memory, memory and democracy, slow-moving change such as biodiversity loss, and the memory of family separation policies. More information: https://jennywustenberg.com/

Programme

5.30 pm

Registration and welcome refreshments

6 pm

Welcome talk

6.05 pm

Lecture begins

6.50 pm

Close and thanks by Executive Dean

7 pm

Drinks reception

7.30 pm

Close

Location details

Address:

Newton building
City Campus
 Nottingham
 NG1 4BU

Parking:

Take a look at our maps and directions page to find the best parking for you to our City campus.

Travel Info:

Take a look at our maps and directions page to find the best parking for you to our City campus.

Past event

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