THE ROLE OF CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS
IN NAVIGATING TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL SPACES OF COSMOPOLITAN MEMORY

ABOUT THE PROJECT

An academic research project about how cultural and historical institutions commemorate atrocities. Published as part of the volume “Death and Events: International Perspectives on Events Marking the End of Life.”

The book provides a unique opportunity to instigate an international, critical discussion, around the connectivities associated with death and events.

Published by Routledge, 2021

Commemorative sites such as museums and monuments, being widely accessible to the international memory community, constitute a form of soft power which provide tools for forging political connections, often at the expense of the local communities whose trauma process is not reflected in the official public landscape. In particular, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia provides an interesting case study of a cultural institution’s efforts to navigate transnational social spaces by playing into the dominant framework of cosmopolitan memory.