This Ph.D. project explores diverse memories of »implication« in histories of violence in the context of memory changes in Europe since the 1980s. It uses oral histories conducted in Austria (on memories of Nazism and World War II) and Northern Ireland (on memories of the Northern Ireland conflict) as case studies to establish how those socialized in previously more dominant memory cultures compose their own and/or their family’s life stories. It further reflects on histories of »implication« in relation to these wider cultural shifts, and how they negotiate politically charged meanings of the past between »private« and »public« spheres. The project examines emotional responses to these changes, which were often experienced as challenging to subjectivities, identities, and family histories, as well as memory work taking place in the private arena of the family. By doing so, the project seeks to understand political mobilizations of such »private« memories and aims to create space for the critical study of heterogeneous cultures of implication and perpetration—and their meanings for society in the present day.

Vanessa Tautter is a Ph.D. researcher at the Centre for Memory, Narrative, and Histories at the University of Brighton with a focus on oral history, memory, and cultural studies. Tautter’s Ph.D. project critically explores heterogeneous memories of implication in violent histories and related experiences of memory change in Europe since the 1980s, using Austria and Northern Ireland as case studies.