UIR-Mémoire

UIR Memoire is an ongoing interdisciplinary research unit at Center for the Study of the Modern Arab World (CEMAM) at the Saint Joseph University (USJ) that aims to promote research on various aspects of memory, including historical and social, individual and collective, personal and national dimensions in Lebanon and the Arab world. It has focused on “memory, identity, patrimony, public spaces, displacement, migration and mobility in the Arab world.” As part of the research, CEMAM carried out several cultural events, seminars, and roundtable discussions between inhabitants about their pre-war and post-war memory of particular neighbourhoods in Beirut including Zoukak-Al-Blat and Ras-El-Nabeh. Supported by local schools and organizations, these activities aimed to understand the transformation of the social history and cultural identity of selected quarters of Beirut and to document and archive these transformations. Furthermore, as part of this ongoing programme, CEMAM supported other organisations’ efforts in dealing with the Lebanon wars, such as that of the International Centre for Transitional Justice’ Oral History Project Badna Na’ref (We Want to Know) in 2011 and 2012, the ‘Right to Know’ campaign led by the Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared in Lebanon as well as IFPO’s research programme ‘Liban, mémoires de guerre: pratiques, traces et usages.’