University of East London Homepage

How to talk about 9/11 – public lecture by Professor Jens Brockmeier

Monday 8 May 2006

Some experiences are too powerful to describe. For witnesses of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, turning painful memories into accurate narrative accounts can be a tortuous experience in itself. How do they even begin to describe the terrible scenes which they witnessed?

The Professor Jens Brockmeier, a leading authority on memory, language and narrative, is in London to take up his new appointment as Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London (UEL).

On Tuesday, 16 May, he will give a public lecture entitled “At the Limits of Narrative: How to talk about 9/11” in London. His talk will present eyewitness accounts of the September 11 attacks from the New York-based National 9/11 Memory Project and will draw insights about how people make sense of intensely traumatic experiences.

Jens Brockmeier is Professor of Psychology at the Free University of Berlin and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Research on Culture, Development and Education at New York University. He has been researching overlapping areas of linguistics, philosophy and psychology for well over 30 years, and his recent work has focussed particularly on narratives of health and illness, the culture of writing, and narrative meaning construction.

Dr Brockmeier said: “Studying the narrative recollections of eye-witnesses of 9/11 has meant trying to understand the difficulties of finding a language for such extreme experiences. It has also raised some fundamental linguistic, psychological and philosophical questions: How are we to talk about experiences that seem to go beyond the usual repertoire of language and narrative? How are we to understand the border zone between experience that we can articulate and communicate and experience that we cannot and that might remain ineffable?”

The Centre for Narrative Research is based at the University of East London’s highly-rated School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies. It brings together work in the field of narrative in a wide variety of contexts across the social sciences.

The Centre supports research on spoken, written and visual narratives and draws on psychological, sociological, anthropological and cultural studies research traditions. It has a strong international dimension, serving as a meeting point for researchers from Europe, Asia and the USA.

“At the Limits of Narrative: How to talk about 9/11” will take place at King’s College London at 5.30pm on May 16.

Ends/.

For details and pictures contact Patrick Wilson: 020 8223 2061 or 07951 797 975

Notes to Editors

The University of East London (UEL) is a global learning community with over 28,000 students from over 120 countries world-wide. Our vision is to achieve recognition, both nationally and internationally, as a successful and inclusive regional university proud of its diversity, committed to new modes of learning which focus on students and enhance their employability, and renowned for our contribution to social, cultural and economic development, especially through our research and scholarship. We have a strong track-record in widening participation and working with industry.

Information for screenreader users:

For a general description of these pages and an explanation of how they should work with screenreading equipment please follow this link: Link to general description

For further information on this web site’s accessibility features please follow this link: Link to accessibility information