CALL FOR PAPERS 

Special issue on Mobilizing memory: repression and resistance (Memory Studies Review, 2028)

Guest editors:

Jamievee Bautista, Scuola Normale Superiore

Stefano Filippini, Scuola Normale Superiore

This Memory Studies Review special issue is based on a conference held in November 2025 at the Center on Social Movements Studies (COSMOS), Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence.  This special issue seeks to reflect on and deepen our understanding of the role of collective memory in social movements at a time when incessant attacks by illiberal forces on democracy have undermined democratic institutions, values, and practices.  Indeed, across the world, the political landscape has seen a significant rise in authoritarian practices—even within long-established democratic regimes. One of the most notable aspects of this shift is the strategic use of collective memory: selective interpretations of the past, the glorification of specific historical narratives, and the silencing of others have become central tools for reshaping the political legitimacy of regimes. However, grassroots mobilizations and social movements have also emerged or re-emerged to challenge these authoritarian tendencies.

These developments point to an urgent need to reconsider the political uses of memory—not as peripheral, but as central to the dynamics of contemporary governance and political contestations in both democratic and repressive settings. With an interdisciplinary approach, we delimit our focus on the memory-movement nexus to two thematic areas:

a) the deployment of politics of memory for repression and control by political regimes, especially addressing topics such as, but not limited to:

• The mobilization of nostalgia
• Memory politics sustaining authoritarianism
• Legacies of former authoritarian regimes
• Memory, conflict, and violence

b) the practice of memory work by social movements and activists, and its use in establishing alternatives to institutional narratives, especially addressing topics such as, but not limited to:

• Movement legacies and memories of former social movements
• Resisting oblivion and reclaiming memories censored by political regimes
• Memory work as resistance, especially in the digital public sphere
• Memory and the mobilization of emotions

While research on the relationship between memory and social movements has grown significantly in recent years, this special issue also highlights the changing contexts in which various political actors mobilize memory: compounding crises, increasingly digitally mediated memory work, and shifting citizens’ political imaginaries on political participation and democracy. Therefore, research on the mobilization of memory requires consideration not only of the motivations behind how political actors strategically use memory but also of the evolving political landscape in which they remember, invoke, and communicate it, revealing, now more than ever, the crucial connection between memory and different political projects across the political spectrum.

We invite empirical contributions from across the social and political sciences, as well as from humanities disciplines, and we encourage diverse cases and plural methodological approaches.

We welcome submissions from both conference participants and non-participants.  

SUBMISSION DETAILS

For submissions, you can send a 500-word abstract (including up to 5 keywords)  along with a short bio abstract (max 150 words) through this form. 

Further information will be communicated in due course, particularly to accepted authors. In the meantime, we encourage the authors to familiarize themselves with the journal’s submission guidelines.

INDICATIVE TIMELINE

Abstract deadline: April 30, 2026

Notification of outcome: by May 15, 2026

Manuscript deadline (for accepted abstracts): by December 2026

This special issue of Memory Studies Review will appear by the end of 2028. Initial manuscript review decisions will be made in July 2027; the submission deadline for the full manuscript after revisions will be in December 2027; and the final version of accepted manuscripts will be in March 2028.

For any further information, feel free to email us:

Jamievee Bautista: jamievee.bautista@sns.it

Stefano Filippini: stefano.filippini@sns.it