On Thursday 1 October, 5–6.30 p.m., the Transform4Europe Alliance invites all students and employees of T4EU member universities to Science Café on Difficult Heritage, which will be held online and at Vytautas Magnus University’s (VMU) Leonidas Donskis Library (23 V. Putvinskio g., Kaunas).

The event will be dedicated to difficult, dissonant, and undesirable heritage. The participants will discuss how the past is used, interpreted, and negotiated in the present to explore what happens when we move beyond celebratory narratives. How does difficult heritage threaten to trouble collective identities? What does this mean for heritage making practices? Can heritage make space for uncomfortable and conflicting memories? What challenges does this create, and what new possibilities might emerge?

These questions will be discussed through diverse perspectives and examples from Portugal, Slovenia, Italy, and Lithuania, considering how different historical and social contexts shape the ways difficult heritage is understood and made in the present.

Participants: José Guilherme Abreu (Catholic University of Portugal), Alessandro Carrieri (University of Trieste), Laura Castro (Catholic University of Portugal), Neža Čebron Lipovec (University of Primorska). Moderated by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Linara Dovydaitytė (Vytautas Magnus University).

The link to the online event will be sent to those who register.

Registration

The Science Café is organised within the framework of T4EU Sustainable Heritage workshop “Cultural Responses to War: Shaping Heritage, Building Resilience”, co-organised by Vytautas Magnus University, Estonian Academy of Art and Catholic University of Portugal, in collaboration with the Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum.