Role
Jenny Wüstenberg is Professor History & Memory Studies and Director of the Research Centre on Public History, Heritage and Memory (PHHM). She directs a strategic project in NTU’s Global Heritage Theme, entitled “Transformative Memory” (2020-23). She teaches on the following courses and modules:
- MRes in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (strand leader)
- MA in History
- HIST308 The Holocaust in History and Memory
- HIST205 People and Planet
- HIST103 Modern European History
- SOCT30814 Political Communications and Society
Prof Wüstenberg is happy to supervise dissertations in her areas of expertise, especially in German, European, North American and settler colonial history, particularly the history and politics of memory, and including comparative and transnational perspectives.
Career overview
Dr. Wüstenberg joined NTU in September 2019. After receiving her PhD in Government & Politics from the University of Maryland, she worked at the School of International Service at American University, at the Free University of Berlin, for the Independent Academic Commission at the Federal Ministry of Justice for the Critical Study of the National Socialist Past. Dr. Wüstenberg’s previous position was DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics and German & European Studies at York University in Toronto.
Research areas
Prof Wüstenberg’s research interests revolve around the involvement of social movements and civil society in memory politics, as well as on transnational and relational perspectives on memory politics. She is spear-heading efforts to conceptualise and evidence “slow memory” as an approach to understanding and remembering slow-moving transformations. One of her current book projects examines comparatively how family separation is remembered as legacies of state-driven policies targeting children, including in the US, Canada, Australia, East Germany and elsewhere.
External activity
Prof Wüstenberg is the co-founder and current co-President of the Memory Studies Association, an international professional organisation that connects memory scholars and practitioners and holds an annual conference. She is the elected Chair of the COST Action on Slow Memory (CA20105), an-EU funded research network that will run from 2021-2025. She is Co-Investigator on an AHRC Standard Grant called “Post-Socialist Britain?” (PI Prof Sara Jones, University of Birmingham). She serves as co-editor of the Worlds of Memory book series with Berghahn Books, as well as reviewer for numerous journals and academic presses. She serves on the advisory board of the History & Memory journal and the Urban Room (Nottingham).
Sponsors and collaborators
- Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
- COST - European Cooperation in Science and Technology
- Eden Portland
- German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
- Berlin Program for Advanced German & European Studies
- Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation
Publications
Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism, edited with Yifat Gutman (2023)
De-Commemoration - Removing Statues and Rename Places, edited with Sarah Gensburger (forthcoming in English and French 2023).
‘Children in Public Memory’ edited special issue of Jeunesse (Winter 2021)
‘Erinnerungskulturen zwischen Traditionspflege und Konflikt. Ansätze in Memory Studies’ in Gewerkschaften im Gedächtnis der Demokratie: Welche Rolle spielen soziale Kämpfe in der Erinnerungskultur? edited by Stefan Berger, Wolfgang Jäger and Ulf Teichmann, Transcript Verlag and Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, April 2022.
‘Challenging the Meaning of the Past from Below: A Typology for Comparative Research on Memory Activists’ Memory Studies Vol.15, No. 6, with Yifat Gutman, December 2022.
‘Dark Pedagogy in Comparative Perspective: Remembering Institutional Child Abuse’, special issue of Jeunesse on “Children in Public Memory”, Winter 2021.
‘Remembering the Shoah from the Ground Up: Civil Society Engagement in German and Transnational Memory’ in Die Zukunft der Erinnerung: Perspektiven des Gedenkens an Nationalsozialismus und Shoah, edited by Stefan Vogt, Christian Wiese, Gury Schneider-Ludorff und Doron Kiesel, October 2021.
‘Protest cycles and contentious moments in memory activism: insights from post-war Germany’ in Remembering Activism: Social Movements and Memory, edited by Stefan Berger, Sean Scalmer, and Christian Wicke, Routledge, May 2021.
Agency in Transnational Memory Politics, edited with Aline Sierp (Berghahn 2020).
‘The Multi-Level Governance of Memory in Germany since 1989’ State of the Region Report “Constructions and instrumentalization of the past” published by the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University in Sweden, January 2021.
‘Pluralism, Governance, and the New Right in German Memory Politics’ German Politics and Society, Issue 132 Vol. 37, No. 3, Autumn 2019: 89–110 (in German as ‘Pluralismus, Governance und die Neue Rechte in der deutschen Erinnerungspolitik’ in Der rechte Rand der DDR-Aufarbeitung, edited by Klaus Bästlein, Enrico Heitzer and Anetta Kahane, Metropol Verlag, forthcoming in 2022).
Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, September 2017, Paperback December 2018, German translation LIT Verlag 2020).
‘Locating Transnational Memory: how “unbound” remembrance is embedded in public spaces' editor of a Special Issue of the International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society (published online first July 2019).
‘Contesting Memory and Citizenship in Canada,’ Special Issue of Citizenship Studies Vol.22, No.4, June 2018, edited with Michael Nijhawan and Daphne Winland.
‘Transnational Memory Politics in Europe,’ Special Issue of Journal of Contemporary European Studies, edited with Aline Sierp (September 2015).
‘Memory Studies – the State of the Field’ Memory Studies Vol.10, No.4, October 2017, with Anamaria Dutceac-Segesten.
‘Vernetztes Gedenken? Netzwerkmethoden und Transnationale Erinnerungsforschung’ Jahrbuch für Politik und Geschichte, Thema: Geschichtspolitik und Erinnerungskulturen global, Band 6, 2016.
‘The struggle for European memory – New contributions to an emerging field’ Comparative European Politics 14(3), 2016.
Press expertise
Memory studies as a field, Memory and slow-moving change (climate change, etc), Social movements and (de)commemoration (dismantling statues etc.), German history and memory, particularly 1945-present, Comparative histories and memory of family separation.