Introduction

The methodological and epistemological process of turning a journalistic project into academic research on the social processes underlying the complexity of collective memory forms. The diachronic, ‘moving’ approach has been developed in response to memory studies in ‘phase two’, in which scholars have examined the cultural or collective memories of a certain group in a specific point in time or in a specific location. Memory studies’ aim to develop ‘non-hegemonic epistemologies of the past’ must especially be scrutinized and questioned. In these ‘epistemologies of the past’, different memory narratives about the same past event are being researched in order to complicate our understanding of the remembrance of that specific past. The shift to a human-centered epistemology of memory that sustains a synchronic, interactional approach also requires operationalizations of our research questions that allow us to understand the everyday, the ordinary, the profane and the vulgar. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.