Current research
Maria Tamboukou on her current research
Maria is currently working on a genealogy of the seamstress, a British Academy funded project, looking into auto/biographical narratives of home based dressmakers and women working in the garment industry. The project spans a range of geographies, histories and disciplinary fields and focuses on the force of narratives in illuminating interrelations between women’s labour and its memory, personal, domestic and public spaces, migration histories, political activism, adult education and women workers' forceful intervention in the cultural and intellectual life of the twentieth century.
Penny Bernstock on her housing migrants research
Penny Bernstock is currently writing a book on the potential housing legacies of London 2012. She has interviewed residents and travellers decanted to make way for the Olympic Park. She has undertaken research on the accelerated regeneration of Stratford High Street producing a site by site overview of community gain. She has produced a detailed overview of the housing legacy plans and is currently working with Syd Jeffers exploring the social characteristics of those migrating and vacating the Stratford Area.
Molly Andrews on her current research project in Germany
The Unbuilding of East Germany: Excavating Biography and History, Funded by the Wissenschaftzentrum of Berlin
In the spring of 1992, just as the Stasi files were opened to the public, I conducted interviews with 40 East Germans, most of whom were anti-state activists who had participated in significant ways in 'the bloodless revolution' of 1989. In the current follow-up study, I re-interview the original participants.
Using an innovative methodology, the study explores how activists reflect on their political engagement over time and the dynamics of intergenerational dialogue in a particular moment of heightened social upheaval. By interviewing participants in these two time frames (the revolutionary moment, and twenty years later), it avoids the presentism characteristic of many oral accounts of historical change, examining what it means in the long run to ‘make history.’ Other topics explored include: the transformation of national identity in the context of the loss of a nation; the representation of former East Germany in popular culture; personal and political reflections on aging; and the political psychology of forgiveness.
