This COST Action, which Jenny chaired and which officially ended in late 2025, brought together scholars and practitioners from many different disciplines (humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, technologists) to consider how we may grasp the meaning slow processes, how we may remember slowly, and how we may study slow change and slow remembrance without feeling too much time pressure. Slow memory is a concept that is intended to help us think from new angles about how societies and individuals remember the pasts that meaningfully affect their present and future. It begins from the premise that we are quite skilled (and have much practice) commemorating sudden or extreme events such as wars, atrocities or catastrophes. But we are less certain about how to reckon with slow-moving transformations that may be just as impactful, such as climate change, deindustrialization, or the gradual expansion of social and political rights. Thus, both negative and positive change can happen without having a clear location or timeframe.
Climate and extinction crises move too slowly for us to pay attention – here’s the answer, “The Conversation, 27 January 2022.”
Our edited volume, a key output of the Action, will appear in open access with Bloomsbury soon. Edited by Joanna Wawrzyniak & Jenny Wüstenberg it is entitled Slowing Down Memory Studies.
Find many more outputs – working papers, a bibliography, a virtual exhibition, policy briefs, a memory policy map of Europe, our podcast, videos, and even a cookbook – at slowmemory.eu