The lecture will explore how we study memory in societies shaped by displacement, conflict, and loss. It will highlight creative, collaborative, and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the lived experiences and life narratives of displaced people. The presentation will examine the role of orature and arts approaches, such as visual expression, performance, and narrative co-creation in knowledge production. Together, these approaches open up new ways of engaging with memory beyond conventional methods, especially in contexts where histories are fragmented, contested, or silenced. The lecture will draw on examples from Displaced Memory, Silences and Open Secrets- an ERC-funded project. The talk will explore how combining these qualitative research methods can enrich our understanding of displaced communities across Europe, the United States, and Africa.

David Mwambari is an associate professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and the principal investigator for the European Research Council (ERC)-funded TMSS project on Life narratives of Violence Among Refugees in six countries. He is the author of many peer reviewed works including Navigating Cultural Memory published in Explorations in Narrative Psychology series (Oxford University Press, 2023), won the APCG Best Book Award at the African Studies Association in 2024 and the MSA First Book Award in Memory Studies Association in 2025. He is a core faculty and a board member at the Oxford Consortium on Human Rights, University of Oxford, and at the Centre for Mediation in Africa at the University of Pretoria.

https://www.woc.uni-bremen.de/events/#david-mwambari-ku-leuven