Uses of the past: History as a resource for the present

Research on collective memory – exploring the lay representations of history – has been booming in the past decades, particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this context, the past has started to be seen as not only interesting in itself, but as especially relevant to understand the present: it weighs on it by shaping our relations with other groups and by defining who we are, to use terms common in collective memory research. The past is thus given authority over the present (and often the future), by assuming that its transformations and deformations play a determining role in the way we understand ourselves and act with others, as members of social groups.
In this special issue, we propose to look, on the contrary, at how the past is transformed and mobilised for the present. That is, instead of conceiving the past as weighting on the present, we would like to explore how it is mobilised and brought to the present, as a resource to give meaning to present actions and groups as well as to imagine collective futures. The contributions to this special issue will thus focus on how history is used in the present, for what purpose and with what results.
The aim of this special issue is also to offer a space to PhD students and post-doctoral fellows to develop new ideas and to promote them within the scientific community. The issue will thus be composed of two parts: a series of articles proposed by ‘junior’ researchers and a series of commentaries by ‘experts’ in the field.