collective memory case study

OPINION article

Memory's malleability: its role in shaping collective memory and social identity.

• 1 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research Program, Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA
• 2 Cognitive Science Laboratory, Department of Psychology, New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA

If anything has been learned about memory, it is that it is fragile and error prone ( Schacter, 2001 ; Loftus, 2005 ). Far from being a verbatim record of the past, memory is well understood as a reconstructive process replete with distortions, and at times, gross inaccuracies. Although often associated with negative consequences ( Wells and Olson, 2003 ; McNally and Geraerts, 2009 ) there is growing evidence to suggest that memory’s imperfections may also be a virtue ( Schacter, 2012 ; Schacter et al., 2011 ). The reconstructive nature of memory is believed to provide greater cognitive flexibility ( Schacter and Addis, 2007 ), underlie mental time travel ( Schacter et al., 2008 ; Szpunar, 2010 ), and support the construction and maintenance of self-identity and life-stories ( Greenwald, 1980 ; Markus and Nurius, 1986 ; Bruner, 1991 ; Baerger and McAdams, 1999 ; Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000 ; Wilson and Ross, 2001 ). We argue here that memory’s malleability benefits more than just the self – the same attitudes, schemata, and social and physical environments that render an individual’s memory unique can also transform initially disparate memories into shared recollections. It is our proposition that autobiographical memories are simultaneously reconstructed to be distinct from that of another person and converge with it as a result of social interactions. Through this convergence, emerges collective memory that will in turn establish a collective identity and promote sociality. Our aim here is to bridge the gap between individual and collective memory by discussing several lines of research elucidating the processes by which the malleability of memory promotes the formation of shared memories.

The Psychological Study of Collective Memory

Collective memories are a community’s shared renderings of the past that help shape its collective identity ( Halbwachs, 1950 ). From this perspective, they are the collective variant of autobiographical memories, which are individually held memories that help shape personal identity. The identity-constructing function of collective memories implies that not all shared memories are collective memories. That is, a memory can only be considered collective if it is widely shared and if it helps to define and bind together a group ( Assmann, 1995 ). For example, Americans are, to a degree, Americans because they possess shared renderings of the past, and Americans differ from Russians, in part, because the two hold different shared memories for similar historical events. For instance, these two nations remember War World II differently. Americans tend to remember D-Day as being the most important battle of the war; Russians remember the most important battle as the Battle of Leningrad ( Wertsch, 2002 ). Their different memories help shape the way Russians and Americans see their place in the world and how they conceive of themselves as a nation.

Whereas psychologists have largely remained on the sidelines of collective memory research, the last few years has evidenced a growing body of literature relevant to the psychological study of collective memory ( Cuc et al., 2006 ; Barnier and Sutton, 2008 ; Stone et al., 2010 ; Coman and Hirst, 2012 ). It seeks to examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying how individual memories emerge, spread, and become shared across a community. These cognitive mechanisms often involve memory distortions, but as we shall see, these distortions are often shared across community memories, and as a result lead to shared memories.

Probably the best understood mechanisms for creating shared memories has been discussed in a various ways since Bartlett (1932) first introduce the notion of schema. He suggested that shared memories may be formed through social interactions because community members, whom are raised together, attend the same school, read the same books, and generally share many of the same experiences, will possess similar schemata, and in turn will shape the way community members remember their past. Take, for example, Hastrof and Cantril’s (1954 ) study of Dartmouth and Princeton students’ memories of a critical football match between the two schools; within group memories were similar, whereas across the two populations, the memories were dissimilar.

Despite these results, it is not always the case that a shared culture and shared schemata will dominate the shaping of one’s memory. Community members achieve their individuality, in part, because they possess unshared attitudes and schemata. The discrepancies, as such, can lead members of the same community to remember a shared event quite differently. Paradoxically, individually distinct memories can still become shared over time. What makes us claim that memory is well-designed for the formation of collective memory is that there are a variety of mechanisms and processes that will lead to mnemonic convergence, in spite of the dissonance that exists among rememberers.

These mechanisms can shape and reshape memory through a variety of means. We focus here on conversational interactions. Although memory may have a number of functions ( Bluck, 2003 ), the communicative function of memory may be uniquely human ( Pillemer, 1992 ), and talking about the past is a pervasive part of everyday life ( Hirst and Echterhoff, 2012 ). Pasupathi et al. (2009) found that 62% of events recorded in diary entries had already been discussed the evening after they had occurred. Similarly, Harber and Cohen (2005) found that after 33 students visited a morgue on a field trip, 881 people knew of the visit after three conversational exchanges had taken place. Furthermore, eyewitnesses tend to talk to other co-witnesses after witnessing incidents ( Skagerberg and Wright, 2008 ).

When investigating how conversations shape memory studies to date have focused primarily on the impact a speaker has on a listener’s memory. Whereas Echterhoff, Higgins, and others have focused on the reflexive influence a speaker can have on reshaping his or her memory, leading to mnemonic convergence between speaker and listener, a so-called shared reality ( Hirst and Echterhoff, 2008 ; Echterhoff et al., 2009 ), speakers can have a unilateral influence on a listener’s memory, leading to a similar shared reality.

Social Contagion

Through acts of social remembering individuals become vulnerable to incorporating details about the past that they did not actually experience. That is, conversations can serve as a mechanism enabling the spread of a memory from one person to another. This process is often referred to as social contagion. Social contagion can be traced back to the classic work of Loftus and colleagues ( Echterhoff et al., 2005 ; Loftus, 2005 ). Although Loftus did not frame her work in terms of social contagion research, these experiments and others ( Loftus, 2005 ) have consistently demonstrated that social interactions (e.g., what an experimenter says to a participant) can be an effective means for implanting false memories. For example, in these studies participants were asked to view a series of slides depicting a traffic accident. After the initial viewing, an experimenter provided them with additional information describing the accident, information that at times contradicted the content in the original images. After the post-event information was given to the subject, participants were asked to recall what they had seen. Across numerous studies Loftus and colleagues have demonstrated the ability to implant false memories for a wide range of events including getting lost in a grocery store, knocking over a wedding cake, and seeing Hanna–Barbara cartoon figures at Disneyland ( Loftus, 2005 ).

Although the implantation of false memories often occurred from exposure to a social stimuli, studies directly examining how the effects of social interactions on memory have shown that social interactions are particularly effective methods for shaping memories. For example, Meade and Roediger (2002) asked participants to view a complex image. Afterward, a confederate discussed the image with the participant, providing false information relating to the original image. Post-discussion, participants were asked to individually recollect what they had originally seen. Although subjects were more likely to incorporate related, novel information into their recollections, even unrelated/unexpected implanted content was included and accepted as a valid memory. Wright et al. (2000) found that two people unknowingly integrated their individual memories of slightly different pictures with that of his or her peer. Cuc et al. (2006) went even further – groups of four were asked to first individually recollect the story they had just read, and then to discuss it with each other, and found across several studies that conversations are an effective means for transforming how different version of the past can converge into a more uniform memory.

The relationship the listener has with the speaker impacts what is transmitted within the conversation. Individuals are prone to conformity; they are not bent on providing novel information to a group recollection. The rememberers are following the conversational maxim – say no more than is necessary ( Grice, 1975 ). What goes unsaid during the initial stages of conversation will be less likely to be included in the final shared memory. In essence, conversation and by extension memory transmission is sometimes a democratic process – frequency of participation determines how much influence one has over the group recollection. Put simply, the more one dominates a conversation the greater impact they will have on shaping the group’s collective memory ( Cuc et al., 2006 ), a conversational role referred to as the “dominant narrator.” In fact, dominant narrators appear to be more effective in shaping collective memory than perceived experts ( Brown et al., 2009 ).

Socially Shared Retrieval-Induced Forgetting

Collective memory is inherently selective ( Rajaram and Pereira-Pasarin, 2010 ; Hirst and Echterhoff, 2012 ). When people recall the past some details are retrieved while other fail to enter into conversation. The consequence of those items not retrieved has become of increasing interest in understanding how distinct memories become increasingly similar across individuals. Hirst and colleagues ( Stone et al., 2012 ) have conducted studies applying the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) paradigm ( Anderson et al., 1994 ) to social interactions. RIF in individuals consistently show that recalling an item inhibits the accessibility of categorically related information. In other words, retrieving a piece of information, a part of memory, makes it harder to remember unrecalled related information than if the individual had not retrieved any aspect of that memory at all. Modifying this paradigm to social interactions, similar patterns were found. That is, when people converse about the past evidence of RIF patterns emerge not only for the person doing the recalling but for the person listening to the speaker as well (socially shared RIF, SS-RIF; for a review see Stone et al., 2012 ). Hirst and colleagues posit that this occurs when the listeners concurrently retrieves with the speaker. SS-RIF has been found in free flowing conversations ( Cuc et al., 2007 ), flashbulb memories ( Coman et al., 2009 ), and in clinical populations ( Brown et al., 2012 ). Interestingly, this effect was found even when speakers and listeners possessed similar, but not identical memories. Coman et al. (2009) asked individuals, unknown to each other, who had been living in New York City on 9/11 to recall their memories of that day. The results showed unmentioned details related to what was recalled became not only harder for the speaker to later remember but also in the listener as well, even though the speaker did not share these exact memories. These findings suggest that when people collectively recall the past, the act of retrieval has the potential to induce forgetting across individuals in similar ways, and like social contagion can also be an effective means for creating collective memories.

Are there certain conditions that increase the probability that a speaker can induce forgetting in a listener? A recent study by Barber and Mather (2012) found that RIF in speakers and listeners was greater when both participants were of the same gender, whereas neither the valence of the memory exchange (i.e., neutral versus negative) nor the age cohort of the participants had significant influence on the rate of forgetting. Barber and Mather’s (2012 ) findings suggest that affiliation between speaker and listener may enhance forgetting. Emotion may also play a role. Brown et al. (2012) asked combat veterans with and without PTSD to study and selectively recall either trauma or neutral stimuli. Although equal levels of forgetting were found for neutral information, individuals with PTSD exhibited greater levels of induced forgetting, individually and socially, for trauma-related stimuli. Future studies will benefit from elucidating more clearly the conditions when social forgetting will and will not occur.

This paper has illustrated the capacity for memory’s malleability to facilitate sociality and transform individual memories into shared, and subsequently collective memories. The transformation of individual memory into collective memory can be seen as an emergent and recursive system(s). We argue that the mechanisms that guide mnemonic convergence are in it of themselves social mediators. The porous nature of memory helps an individual maneuver through a social world that consists of an aggregate of autobiographical memories, and in so doing the individual as such engenders collective remembrance. Coman and Hirst (2012) found that mnemonic influences, such as social contagion and SS-RIF, are transitive and strengthen as they propagate. The plurality of the process is inevitable given the multiple environments individuals exist within. What begins as a dyadic exchange, results in a cohesive network, that is sustained by a multiplicity of convergences within and between groups.

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Citation: Brown AD, Kouri N and Hirst W (2012) Memory’s malleability: its role in shaping collective memory and social identity. Front. Psychology 3 :257. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00257

Received: 30 May 2012; Accepted: 05 July 2012; Published online: 23 July 2012.

Reviewed by:

Copyright: © 2012 Brown, Kouri and Hirst. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.

*Correspondence: adam.brown@nyumc.org

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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16 Collective Memory: How Groups Remember Their Past

• Published: December 2017
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Studies of collective memory address how people create and maintain a shared representation of their group’s past and group identity. In particular, we conside how knowledge representations and schematic narrative templates (recurring stories of the past) contribute to collective remembering. Diverging memories between groups can cause conflict, so examining how different group’s varying memories of “the same event” can cause misunderstandings is critical. We consider whether (and how) groups can mediate their differences to attempt to reach consensus about the past, using narratives of World War II as a case study. The study of collective memory comprises many different senses of the term remembering , and this chapter emphasizes the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration to examine the issues from multiple perspectives.

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Connecting Collective Memory and Community Resilience: A Case Study of Anaconda, Montana

• Megan Moore University of Montana
• Elizabeth Covelli Metcalf
• Alexander Metcalf

Post-industrial communities across the world are transitioning from industrial economies and identities to an uncertain future. Their successful transitions depend on communities’ abilities to navigate change and maintain a quality of life, or their community’s resilience. Previous scholarship offers resources and capabilities that facilitate or inhibit community resilience such as leadership, social capital, and information. However, collective memory is not well integrated within the community resilience literature. Drawing on data from interviews with 33 community leaders in the town of Anaconda, Montana, we illuminate the impact of collective memory on community resilience. The Anaconda Smelter Stack stands out as a specific landmark and prominent feature of the built environment that perpetuates particular collective memories in Anaconda. We find that collective memory is an integral part of community resilience, where memories can aid in a community’s recovery and rebuilding or constrain thinking and divide viewpoints. We argue that ignoring collective memory’s connections to resilience can undermine efforts to face changes in these communities.

Keywords: Community resilience, collective memory, post-industrial towns, mining

_________________________________________________________________ 

Connecter la mémoire collective et résilience communautaire: une étude de cas d'Anaconda, au Montana

Résumé Les communautés postindustrielles du monde entier sont en transition d’économies et d’identités industrielles vers un avenir incertain. La réussite de leurs transitions dépend de la capacité des communautés à s’adapter au changement et à maintenir une qualité de vie, ou de la résilience de leur communauté. Les bourses antérieures offrent des ressources et des capacités qui facilitent ou inhibent la résilience communautaire, telles que le leadership, le capital social et l'information. Cependant, la mémoire collective n’est pas bien intégrée dans la littérature sur la résilience communautaire. En nous appuyant sur les données d'entretiens avec 33 dirigeants communautaires de la ville d'Anaconda, dans le Montana, nous éclairons l'impact de la mémoire collective sur la résilience communautaire. La cheminée de la fonderie d'Anaconda se distingue comme un point de repère spécifique et un élément important de l'environnement bâti qui perpétue des mémoires collectives particulières à Anaconda. Nous constatons que la mémoire collective fait partie intégrante de la résilience communautaire, où les souvenirs peuvent contribuer au rétablissement et à la reconstruction d’une communauté ou contraindre la réflexion et diviser les points de vue. Nous soutenons qu’ignorer les liens entre la mémoire collective et la résilience peut saper les efforts visant à faire face aux changements dans ces communautés.

Mots-clés : résilience communautaire, mémoire collective, villes postindustrielles, extraction

Digital Oriented Museum Design Based on Collective Memory—Case Study of Bache Old Town

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• Y. T. Liu 14 ,
• Y. W. Q. Liu 14 ,
• G. S. Y. Liu 14 &
• J. Xia 14  

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering ((LNCE,volume 393))

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• INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS AND STRUCTURES TOWARDS A CARBON NEUTRAL FUTURE

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With socioeconomic development and urbanization, Bache Old Street has undergone significant changes in its spatial structure, cultural features, and traditional way of life. As an ancient canal town in the Grand Canal Cultural Belt, it faces depopulation, inadequate preservation of historic buildings, and the loss of historical and cultural continuity. The erosion of Bache Old Street's cultural roots as a traditional fishing village has severed the inhabitant’s ties with the area. This report aims to explore the concept, medium, and manifestation of collective memory. By employing methods such as fieldwork, visits, research, and the restoration and digital design of old buildings, it proposes the establishment of a digital museum to preserve and develop the collective memory of Bache Old Street. This study offers innovative ideas for sustainable urban regeneration, presenting a digital-oriented museum as a means to realize and preserve Bache Old Street's collective memory in the digital space.

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Liu, Y.T., Liu, Y.W.Q., Liu, G.S.Y., Xia, J. (2024). Digital Oriented Museum Design Based on Collective Memory—Case Study of Bache Old Town. In: Papadikis, K., Zhang, C., Tang, S., Liu, E., Di Sarno, L. (eds) Towards a Carbon Neutral Future. ICSBS 2023. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 393. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7965-3_33

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Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field: A Joint BI/CRQ Discussion BI and the Conflict Resolution Quarterly invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

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Giovanni Dazzo

In this paper, I explore how collective memory—or, the memories of a group generated through shared experience and values (Halbwachs, 1951/1992)—manifests itself in the process and path toward reconciliation. I seek to understand how theoretical conceptualizations of collective memory apply in transitional justice spaces (Brants & Klep, 2013; Chirwa, 1997), particularly in Guatemala and Cambodia, where political and military leaders did not necessarily take responsibility or offer apologies to affected populations during war crimes trials and truth commissions (Bret, 2016; McGrew, 2011). Through this comparative case study of Guatemala and Cambodia, I am interested in understanding how collective memory has been negotiated and contested through the use of narrative (Klep, 2012).

More specifically, my interest lies in analyzing how narratives—e.g., text, oral histories, art (e.g., street art, community art)—are constructed by affected populations, and whether it seems that these narrative forms contribute to reconciliation or healing. Through this comparative case study, I seek to answer the following research questions: (1) How, and in what ways, have affected populations utilized various narrative forms to negotiate and contest collective memory? (2) Does the narrative process seem to lead to healing or forgiveness, despite the absence of other precursors for reconciliation, such as formal apologies?

For this comparative case study, I have chosen Cambodia and Guatemala based on three criteria, some of which I mentioned above. First, while both countries experienced prolonged periods of mass atrocities and rights violations, trials were held decades after these periods ended. Second, while truth commissions and criminal tribunals have been held, leaders did not offer apologies to affected populations. Last, those who held various roles and responsibilities during each country’s armed conflict continue to remain in some form of (political, military, and/or economic) power; thus, official or national narratives—through political discourse established during war crimes trials or even educational texts, such as history books—create a master narrative that may not memorialize victims or may even seek to hide the past.

Before moving on to the comparative case study of Guatemala and Cambodia, I first outline theoretical conceptualizations of collective memory and reconciliation. I then review how formal transitional justice processes—such as criminal trials and government-led truth commissions—may attempt to formulate (authoritative) collective memories of trauma and injustice, in an effort to establish a national narrative that promotes reconciliation. I then consider how communities in Guatemala and Cambodia have formulated their own collective memories—providing examples of community-led text and art—to counter master narratives established through traditional transitional justice processes (e.g., trials, government-led truth commissions). By juxtaposing formal and community-led narrative processes, I demonstrate how each serves a purpose on the path toward reconciliation. However, I also seek to highlight how formal transitional justice processes can often lead to a national (master) narrative that complicates how affected communities negotiate and construct collective memories to reconcile with past trauma.

Collective Memory and Reconciliation: A Brief Literature Review

In this section, I bring together the concepts of collective memory (Halbwachs, 1950/1980, 1951/1992) and reconciliation (Lederach, 1997). Based on the foundational sociological work of Halbwachs (1950/1980, 1951/1992), an individual’s memories are composed of both an individual and collective element. Although memory was originally seen as a purely cognitive state, or appearing solely in one’s consciousness, Halbwachs (1951/1992) argues that an individual’s memories are often dependent on society and to the groups which we belong. By listening to the recollections of others, an individual places their thoughts within “a collective memory and social frameworks for memory” (Halbwachs, 1951/1992, p. 38). In noting the social and relational aspect of memory, Halbwachs shows the mutually reinforcing nature between the individual and collective. As an individual hears the memories of others within a group—whether these originate from family members, religious groups, or a social class—these recollections can reinforce an individual’s idea of self while further reinforcing their identity within a group. This mutually reinforcing nature between the individual and collective demonstrates how memory may transcend temporal boundaries: As an individual hears collective memories of the past , recollections can encourage present membership within a particular group identity, in turn, bonding them toward a shared future .

Related to Halbwach’s (1951/1992) conceptualization of memory as relational and traversing temporal boundaries, I focus on reconciliation as “a place, the point of encounter where concerns about both the past and the future are met” (Lederach, 1997, p. 27). As Lederach (2005) notes, an integrated framework for peacebuilding can take a number of forms on the path to reconciliation, from (inter)governmental processes, such as truth commissions and war crimes tribunals that seek accountability and public acknowledgment of abuse (Hayner, 2001); restorative justice initiatives that aim to repair victim-offender relationships, such as community circles (Zehr, 2002); and, counseling and trauma healing initiatives to address collective and generational trauma. Lederach (2005) illustrates how these strategies seek to retell stories and experiences—or, in his words, re-story —in an effort to “renegotiate history and identity” (p. 145). However, for affected groups, the recognition and negotiation of this history and identity can become rooted in experiences and recollections of trauma, forming a “collective memory of times when they were deeply violated by the other” (Lederach, 2005, p. 142).

Collective memory, then, becomes a way for groups to recognize a shared past of abuse; in turn, formulating a group identity that provides support and social solidarity in the future (Brewer, 2006). The renegotiation of history and identity, subsequently, becomes a vital concept in understanding how the process of healing and reconciliation is encountered—in formal or community-led processes, or to address individual or collective traumas. In environments of protracted conflict, collective memories may be formed as a consequence of hearing others’ recollections of past trauma, but there also seems to be a need to establish a shared experience and a shared future for reconciliatory purposes.

Collective Memory in Transitional justice

In formal transitional justice processes—such as criminal tribunals and government-led truth commissions—there has often been an attempt to search for facts in an effort to establish “a shared truth about crime and injustice that allows sense to be made of a traumatic past and is a prerequisite for a stable future” (Brants & Klep, 2013). According to Brants and Klep (2013), proponents of these mechanisms state that there is an ability to establish “a coherent collective memory” (Osiel, 1997) or “national narrative” (Minow, 2008). However, Brants and Kelp argue that while these formal procedures may serve the purpose of bringing forth justice, an overreliance on these mechanisms may conflate fact-finding with truth. While these mechanisms may be effective in creating a national narrative for the pursuit of security and stability, critics often argue how collective these “collective memories” can be (Chirwa, 1997; Winter, 2006).

As Brewer (2003) notes, “nations and memory are indivisible” (p. 215). However, if a formal process such as a trial can only use memories if they meet evidentiary requirements, it begs the question of whether the “collective memory” will only serve the State’s purpose of constructing a national narrative, or if it can also provide a space for victims to experience reconciliation. Truth-finding through a purely legalistic process, then, complicates the relationship that the victim-survivor has with the transitional justice process and presents a paradox. Trials provide a space for victim-survivors to bear witness, but if truths are contradictory or memories are blurry, they cannot be corroborated as fact; in turn, confounding the master narrative sought by the court and State.

The process of establishing a master narrative, however, is not solely established through international criminal trials. Processes such as truth commissions are often sought by governments so as to provide “an official version of events” (Brewer, 2003, p. 219). Through a truth commission, there is an emphasis in “producing a report that acknowledges victims’ voices and endows them with official authority vis-à-vis the nation and the world” (Brants & Klep, 2003, p. 43). While trials must follow due process, truth commissions are often designed to serve a restorative function—providing a space where competing memories may reside. However, the purpose behind truth-telling in truth commissions has come under scrutiny as questions arise over their effectiveness in promoting healing (Hayner, 2011) and securing reparations (Laplante and Theidon, 2007).

Phelps (2004) also calls into question how witnesses’ testimonies will be used within a truth commission’s official report—i.e., the basis for the national (master) narrative. For instance, after the Chilean National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Rettig Report (named after lawyer Rául Rettig, president of the Commission) essentially buried the testimonies of victim-survivors by only recognizing the dead or disappeared as victims (Brants & Klep, 2003; Phelps, 2004). While the Rettig Report did acknowledge acts of repression and torture committed under the military regime, it did not acknowledge the role of individual perpetrators. Thirteen years later, the Rettig Report was followed by the Valech Report (named after the president of the National Commission on Political Detention and Torture); however, in this case, it sought to name those who were detained and tortured by the State for political reasons. Similar to the Rettig Report though, the Valech Report did not name perpetrators (Brants & Klep, 2013).

While these government-led truth commissions produced important historical findings on the abuses suffered by the population, both fell short in naming perpetrators. In these reports, the names of victims and survivors are in full display, but the torture and detention they suffered are historically marked as the responsibility of faceless, nameless perpetrators who were never put on trial. With trauma acknowledged but responsibility foregone, it is evident how victim-survivors’ testimonies were co-opted in an effort to authoritatively construct a collective memory that served the State’s objective of national reconciliation. As communities felt their memories were shunned, victim-survivors and human rights groups sought reconciliation in their own manner, through “public manifestations of memory in memorials, monuments, and the creation of visitor centres in former torture and detention centers” (Brants & Klep, 2013, p. 45).

Comparative Case Study: Guatemala and Cambodia

As with the example of Chile, in this section I present a comparative case study of two nations—Guatemala and Cambodia—where victim-survivors and human rights groups have sought to construct collective memories of past trauma. First, I briefly introduce the formal processes (e.g., international criminal trials, government-led truth commissions) taken in each country. I then highlight several examples of how communities have contested the national (master) narrative produced and on display from formal mechanisms.

Formal Transitional Justice Processes

In each country, formal transitional justice processes occurred at varying stages after periods of protracted conflict. In Cambodia, a formal or government-led truth commission was never established after the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge, which claimed the lives of over 1.7 million (i.e., one-quarter of the population) from 1975-1979 (McGrew, 2011). Conversely, in Guatemala, a formal truth commission—the Historical Clarification Commission / La Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH)—began three years after the signing of the official peace accord in 1996 (Mersky, 2005). The CEH sought to understand how and why crimes were committed. The CEH narrated how anti-democratic sentiment and structural injustices allowed the Guatemalan military to act with impunity from 1960-1996 and showed that 200,000 individuals were killed or forcibly disappeared, with 83% of victims identified as Mayan.

With regard to trials, the CEH recommended that the Guatemalan State was responsible for holding perpetrators responsible. As a result of this recommendation, José Efraín Ríos Montt—who served as a military General during the armed conflict, as well as President of Guatemala—was put on trial after his immunity as a Congressperson ended in 2012. Although he was tried and convicted of genocide and sentenced to 80 years in prison, this ruling was shortly overturned. In 2016, he died while his case was being retried (Kinzer, 2018).

In Cambodia, five leaders of the Khmer Rouge were arrested in 2007 and transferred to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The first (Kang Kek Iew) was indicted in 2007; the remaining three (Nuon Chea; Khieu Samphan; Ieng Sary) in 2010. The fifth (Ieng Thirith) was declared mentally unfit to stand trial due to Alzheimer’s disease. Kang Kek Iew—who operated the Tuol Sleng torture and detention center—was initially sentenced to 35 years in prison, which was later extended to a life sentence. Nuon Chea (second in charge after leader, Pol Pot) and Khieu Samphan (who acted as Head of State and succeeded Pol Pot) were charged with crimes against humanity and genocide; both received life sentences. Of these five leaders, two are serving their life sentences while the others died of natural causes while in detention. According to official documentation from the ECCC (n.d.-a), the court provides victim-survivors with opportunities for reparation, while spokespersons have gone on the record stating that the court provides a space for reconciliation (Narin, 2017).

With regard to formal mechanisms providing a space for reconciliation in Guatemala and Cambodia, it should be noted that General Ríos Montt and the Khmer Rouge leaders did not offer formal apologies. While some maintained their innocence or denied their culpability, others were unable to remember important details regarding their crimes; thus, exhibiting a collective amnesia (Chandler, 2008), or a “conscious decision to forget” (Brewer, 2006). Although trials and truth commissions seek to understand what happened and to whom, they often seek to establish individual guilt. Herein lies the paradox in stating that these formal processes can establish a collective memory that is intended for reconciliation: Perpetrators’ and victim-survivors’ accounts are pitted against one another, in an effort to collectively produce a memory that can then be used to establish guilt or a version of history (Brants & Klep, 2013). However, if perpetrators exhibit collective amnesia and victim-survivors’ accounts cannot be corroborated as fact, it can complicate the efficacy of establishing a collective memory for the purpose of national reconciliation.

Community-Based Approaches

While formal processes provide a space to seek facts, “they cannot impose shared remembering” (Brants & Klep, 2013, p. 47). Yet, in contexts where high-profile leaders did not offer apologies and denied culpability during formal processes—as done in Guatemala and Cambodia—there is an opportunity to explore how communities have sought to establish a collective memory of the past. In this section, I highlight a number of approaches exhibited by victim-survivors and human rights groups in Guatemala and Cambodia.

Constructing Collective Memory in Guatemala

Although Guatemala agreed to a government-led truth commission in 1994 and the CEH began in 1999, human rights groups questioned its mandate and whether it could produce a useful report (Mersky, 2005). For this reason, the CEH was preceded by a community-led truth commission: The Interdiocesan Project for the Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI). This project, led by the Catholic Church and coordinated among several human rights groups, pursued truth-telling by directly engaging communities. From 1995 to 1998, trained volunteers visited communities and collected 6,500 testimonies directly from victim-survivors. As a result, the REMHI Report (1999) was able to document 14,291 separate acts of violence and 401 massacres (noting locations and dates) committed by the military.

Although the REMHI Report did not have a legal mandate and much of its evidence could not be used in court as it did not meet evidentiary standards, this collection of testimonies achieved two important objectives. First, the REMHI Report provided victim-survivors with the space to tell their stories, creating a collective memory of trauma, as directly told by those who experienced abuse. Second, by providing the dates and locations of massacres, it provided a lead for nonprofit organizations such as the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG), which could later conduct forensic investigations and begin the exhumation of mass graves.

For instance, after identifying a mass grave site and the remains of over 220 people atop the hills of San Juan Comalapa, a community memorial site was built by FAFG and a victim-survivors group, the National Coordinator of Widows of Guatemala (CONAVIGUA). After exhuming some of these remains over a decade ago, FAFG and CONAVIGUA decided to return the bones to the mountaintop where they were found, in an effort to deliver them back to their families and restore some dignity to those who were killed (Strochlic, 2019). FAFG reinterred bodies of those found next to a memorial that was built by CONAVIGUA. On the nimajay —meaning big house in the Kaqchikel language—are murals painted by community artists.

As shown in Figure 1, the community chose to depict a scene of violence from the armed conflict. As mentioned in the REMHI Report, this mural shows the scorched-earth policy administered by the military regime—as illustrated by the village homes being burned in the background. The scene includes indigenous community members being executed by masked military forces, as well as helicopters flying overhead.

However, unlike the facts heard during trials and truth commissions, the left-hand side of the mural includes a symbolic scene in line with Kaqchikel folklore. This scene depicts nature —as symbolized by a human figure—embracing the bodies of the dead. In this exhibition of collective memory, the Kaqchikel artists chose to show how nature has nurtured the bodies of the dead, having come back to life as corn and sustaining the living community members.

The murals of the Kaqchikel Maya in San Juan Comalapa portrays a collective memory of the past trauma that many in this community witnessed and experienced. However, for many in Guatemala City, the crimes committed by the military regime are a distant past and are only stories told by others. For this reason, artists such as Daniel Hernández-Salazar have sought to remind those in Guatemala City of the forgotten past (Hoelscher, 2008) through street art.

In one example, the artist chose to depict an angel, overlaying a photograph of a scapula (from a photo of a victim’s bones) on that of a man. This photograph, portraying “angels screaming at genocidal trauma” were installed across 36 sites in Guatemala City, facing buildings such as the military intelligence facility, army headquarters, and wealthy suburbs. As noted by Hernández-Salazar, he chose to publicly install these angels as an exercise in pushing against collective amnesia (Brewer, 2006; McGrew, 2011); or, to what he refers to as an “institutionalized forgetfulness… fomented by those in power” (Hoelscher, 2008, p. 197). Although Guatemala held two truth commissions, one formal and one community-based, it is worth noting how those in power can exacerbate an institutionalized forgetfulness, or collective amnesia, that slowly dissipates the collective memory of those who suffered trauma.

Constructing Collective Memory in Cambodia

Unlike Guatemala, victim-survivors in Cambodia did not have formal transitional justice processes until the start of the ECCC in 2007. Thus, how did victim-survivors seek to construct collective memories in the absence of more formal processes? Much like civil society groups in Guatemala, those in Cambodia sought to create their own forms of collective memory by coordinating work that is often done by the state. In the absence of a truth commission, victim-survivors did not have the formal space to provide testimony. Thus, organizations such as the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-CAM) sought to preserve stories of trauma—through systematic documentation and archival procedures—in turn, contributing to the construction of collective memories (McGrew, 2011). Since 1995 (just four years after the Paris Peace Agreements), DC-CAM has sought to educate and inform Cambodians and the world of the crimes committed, often replacing the type of work conducted during a truth commission. Through its systematic procedures, its documentation became a primary source of evidence for the ECCC (McGrew, 2011).

While DC-CAM has employed systematic documentation and archival procedures, other nonprofits have expressly focused on participatory or community-based approaches to peace and reconciliation. Youth for Peace has sought to address the structural injustices intensified by the country’s armed conflict by forming peace education curriculum and various activities (e.g., art workshops) for youth. Youth are able to unpack the traumas of the past by understanding history, as well as negotiating and contributing to collective memories through art.

Additionally, through one of its flagship participatory projects, Youth for Peace organizes intergenerational dialogue and study tours to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, so youth can learn about the genocide. They also hold lessons on facilitation skills and nonprofit management, and youth then create and implement their own projects to constructively contribute to the nation’s collective memories of the genocide. Just as Lederach (2005) notes the necessity to address generational trauma as a way to “renegotiate history and identity” (p. 145), Youth for Peace seeks to further the path toward reconciliation by repairing relationships and addressing shared remembering through narratives.

Much like Youth for Peace, the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center (n.d.-b) in Phnom Penh “opens the doors to large swathes of memory” by acquiring, restoring, and providing free public access to Cambodia’s audiovisual history that was lost during the decades of war. Through its Acts of Memory project, the Bophana Center has created a free online exhibition (Transmissions 2018) on their website, where victim-survivors tell their stories to youth. These intergenerational dialogues have been recorded, allowing viewers to learn about past abuses. As these interviews are recorded, they also provide a digital archive that can be preserved so future generations can view this content and learn about the nation’s history. This initiative was proposed to the ECCC as a project to aid reparation—through public acknowledgment—for the civil parties in Case 002/02 (i.e., the second trail against Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, where charges of genocide, forced marriage, and other grave human rights violations were heard). As noted by the ECCC (n.d.), donors have provided funds for projects that grant moral and collective reparations “to preserve collective memory and restore victims’ dignity”.

Through this partnership between the Bophana Center and the ECCC, there seems to be recognition that public acknowledgment and collective memory may not occur within the confines of the criminal tribunal. Rather, it is apparent that while a formal transitional justice process, such as the ECCC, focuses on its mandate for retributive justice, it is not limited in lending support to community-based organizations that can offer restorative justice. Although the intent behind formal and community-based processes may differ, the ECCC has been able to support organizations such as the Bophana Center, which may be better placed to provide a space for victim-survivors to re-tell their stories outside the legal boundaries of the court.

In the case of the Bophana Center, there is an opportunity to explore how formal and informal (community-based) processes have worked in tandem. By funding these types of organizations, and explicitly mentioning that these projects are for the purpose of moral reparation and restorative justice, the ECCC has shown that the path toward reconciliation can be one of civil society and government partnership. However, as artists and nonprofits across Cambodia have aided communities in constructing collective memories around past trauma, it has been questioned whether the Cambodian people have reached and will sustain a stage of deep reconciliation (McGrew, 2011). Through extensive qualitative research, McGrew (2011) ascertains that many Cambodians still live in a state of shallow coexistence—with perpetrators and victim-survivors living separate lives and simply tolerating one another—rather than a deep reconciliation based on relationships that are “complex, interdependent, and meaningful” (p. 514). From McGrew’s research, it is demonstrated that nonprofits such as DC-CAM and Youth for Peace have conducted vital reconciliatory work; however, few communities have conducted reconciliatory projects of their own. As McGrew’s findings are from 2011—at a time when only one of the ECCC trials had concluded—there is an opportunity for future research to see how formal processes have contributed to the nation’s collective memory and its path toward reconciliation. Furthermore, through examples such as those between the Bophana Center and the ECCC, there has certainly been an evolution in partnership that did not exist when DC-CAM, as a nonprofit, sought to fill a gap by preserving and shaping the nation’s collective memory.

Recent examples in Cambodia provide a glimpse of hope with regard to how formal and informal transitional justice processes can work in partnership. However, the examples in Guatemala continue to show how communities are continuing to contest and counter the national (master) narrative established through the court. While Guatemala’s formal and informal truth commissions are arguably seen as successes, the overturning of Ríos Montt’s verdict shows how formal processes can still be coopted through political means (Brants & Klep, 2013). As Brewer (2006) notes, there is an opportunity for memory to be seen as a peace strategy. However, when former generals have political immunity or when verdicts are overturned, communities—such as those in Guatemala—may feel the need to respond by shaping their own collective memories as a strategy for healing. In Guatemala, this is evidenced through a Kaqchikel community illustrating vivid images of past atrocities at a community-built memorial site. It is also seen through the work of an artist—such as Daniel Hernández-Salazar—who has strategically placed symbolic angels that keep watch over military and government offices, showing that someone may someday hold them accountable for past abuses.

Whether it is in partnership or as nonviolent demonstration, informal processes (e.g., text, street art) can illustrate a community’s reaction or response to formal transitional justice processes. As Chirwa (1997) notes, collective memory becomes a necessary part of healing and reconciliation as it “invokes shared emotions and consciousness” (p. 482). Much like the concept of reconciliation (Lederach, 2005), collective memory (Halbwachs, 1992) is a relational process that goes beyond individual accounts or cognitive capacity. In the cases of Guatemala and Cambodia, there is evidence that victim-survivors and human rights groups may not have felt that formal processes—such as criminal tribunals and government-led truth commissions—achieved truth or justice. As states seek to create a collective memory on the path toward national reconciliation, there continues to be a need to question whether victim-survivors’ memories are preserved and respected within the “collective”; or, if they are simply being used as a tool to contribute toward a master narrative that seeks security and stability over deep reconciliation.

Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center. (n.d.). About the Bophana Center. Bophana . Retrieved from https://www.bophana.org .

Brants, C. and Klep, K. (2013). Transitional justice: History-telling, collective memory and the victim-witness. International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 7 (1), 36-49.

Brett, R. (2016). Peace without social reconciliation? Understanding the trial of Generals Ríos Montt and Rodriguez Sánchez in the wake of Guatemala’s genocide. Journal of Genocide  Research, 18 (2-3), 285-303.

Brewer, J.D. (2006). Memory, truth and victimhood in post-trauma societies. In: G. Delanty & K. Kumar (Eds.), The sage handbook of nations and nationalism . London: SAGE  Publications Ltd.

Chandler, D. (2008). Cambodia deals with its past: Collective memory, demonisation and induced amnesia. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 9 (2-3): 355–369.

Chicuecue, N.M. (1997). Reconciliation: The role of truth commissions and alternative ways of healing. Development in Practice, 7 (4), 483-486.

Chirwa, W. (1997). Collective memory and the process of reconciliation and reconstruction.  Development in Practice, 7 (4), 479-482.

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) (n.d.-a). Victims Participation.  Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia . Retrieved from https://                                  www.eccc.gov.kh/en .

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) (n.d.-b). Wide ranging support secured for the reparations for victims of the Khmer Rouge. Extraordinary Chambers in  the Courts of Cambodia . Retrieved from https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en .

Galtung, J. (2001). After violence, reconstruction, reconciliation, and resolution: Coping with visible and invisible effects of war and violence. In: M. Abu-Nimer (Eds.),  Reconciliation, justice, and coexistence . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Halbwachs, M. (1950/1980). The collective memory . New York: Harper & Row.

Halbwachs, M. (1951/1992). On collective memory . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hayner, P.B. (2011). Unspeakable truths: Transitional justice and the challenge  of truth commissions . New York: Routledge.

Hoelscher, S. (2008). Angels of memory: Photography and haunting in Guatemala City.  GeoJournal, 73 (2008), 195-217.

Kinzer, S. (2018, April). Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemalan Dictator Convicted of Genocide, Dies  at 91. The New York Times , Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com .

Klep, K. (2012). Tracing collective memory: Chilean truth commissions and memorial sites.   Memory Studies, 5 (3), 259-269.

McDowell, S., and Braniff, M. (2014). Commemoration as conflict: Space, memory and identity  in peace processes . Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

McGrew, L. (2011). Pathways to reconciliation in Cambodia. Peace Review, 23 (2011), 514–21.

Mersky, M. (2005). Human rights in negotiating peace agreements: Guatemala . Belfast: The nternational Council on Human Rights Policy.

Minow. M. (2008). Making history or making peace: When prosecutions should give way to truth commissions and peace negotiations. Journal of Human Rights 7 (2): 174–85.

Morris, L. (2017, November 14). ‘A way of healing’: Art and memory in Latin America. BBC News . Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com .

Recovery of Historical Memory Project (1999). Guatemala: Never Again . Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis.

Narin, S. (2017, March 4). No justice without remembering. Development + Cooperation: D+C . Retrieved from https://www.dandc.eu .

Osiel, M.J. (2008). In defense of liberal show trials – Nuremberg and beyond. In  Perspectives on the Nuremberg Trial , ed. Guénaël Mettraux, 704–25. Oxford: Oxford               University Press.

Strochlic, N. (2019, December 19). The cold cases of Guatemala’s civil war were impossible to  identify—until now. National Geographic . Retrieved from

https://www.nationalgeographic.com

Winter, J. (2006). Remembering war: The great war between memory and history in the twentieth century. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

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Collective Memory in Advocating Peace. The Nanjing Incident as a case study

Idham Badruzaman , Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta

In his paper "Collective Memory in Advocating Peace. The Nanjing Incident as a case study" Idham Badruzaman provides an example of how to build a peaceful Asian Community. The Foundation is establishing forms of bilateral cooperation at the educational level; mostly in universities and higher education institutions across the world. These programs are contributing to create cross-cultural ties within the Asian Community and across the world, surpassing national interests and boundaries, fostering inter-culturalism, and promoting tolerance amid differences. By focusing on the Nanjing Incident, the paper provides an example of how the building of collective memory can help reconciliation, showing the efforts made by Japan and China to maintain a neighbor-relationship. The study collects information about the different actions undertaken to create a collective memory of the Nanjing Incident in order to turn this public recollection into reconciliation. There have been at least seven efforts made to make public recollection about the Nanjing Incident. They include the following activities: publishing a book about Nanjing, building the National Memorial Hall, Annual Commemoration, setting up a National Memorial Day, registering the inscription with UNESCO, establishing the Peace and Research Institute, and eventually registering the city of Nanjing to become A City of Peace. In addition, there are many other events and elements that are worth-remembering as part of the collective memory for both the Chinese and the Japanese people. All of them are directed to the normalisation of neighbour relations, in the spirit of peace and reconciliation.

Recommended Citation

Badruzaman, Idham. "Collective Memory in Advocating Peace. The Nanjing Incident as a case study." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 20.2 (2018): < https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3234 > This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field.

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Case Studies in Design is a new effort to create opportunities for community and design leaders to think together about ways to catalyze transformational design, planning, and place-keeping from the ground up. The goals are to learn from ambitious projects designed in community, to share knowledge and experience through dialogue and a public library of case studies, and to train ourselves for new practices of creative, collective action. We hope to build conversation among thinkers and doers in community organizations, movements, public agencies, schools, and the architecture, landscape, planning, heritage and art fields.  

Projects designed in community Case Studies in Design will support the development of 5 case studies per year, over 3 years (15 case studies prepared by 15 people in total). The aim is to study projects where design and planning helped build community power, and where community-led processes produced new forms of design agency through:

1. Deep conversation to shape the nature and time horizon of the project 2. Openness and deference to rooted leadership 3. Reciprocal (not extractive) processes, creatively designed 4. Collaboration and resource-sharing 5. New alliances to achieve leverage.

Collective writing and thinking project Case Studies in Design is coordinated by PennPraxis , a center at Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania that is dedicated to the translation of theory into praxis (or action). Our aspiration is to bring together people from a wide geography and set of perspectives on diverse change efforts. Case study projects could range from outstanding examples of community- engaged design practice to more radical roles and results of design, planning or place-keeping. To propel this collective writing and thinking project, we are seeking applications from people who would like to research and author a case study.

We will support 5 case study writers in 2024 with a fee and expense allowance of $50,000 per author to research, write, and curate or create illustrations for a case study over a period of 8 months. Fees for community members participating in interviews, travel and other expenses will be managed by authors within the resources of the $50,000 lump sum for fee and expense. (Two people may apply to work together on a case project, sharing the fee.)

Public library and action—oriented summit PennPraxis will publish the case studies and create an online public library to disseminate them. We will organize a variety of forums from the classroom to gatherings with policymakers and funders to propagate strategies that increase community conversation and influence in the built environment. In the third year of the effort, with 15 case studies in print, we will organize a summit for community leaders, policymakers, students, practitioners, and thinkers to probe more deeply into methods and to shape lessons learned for key audiences. The aim of the summit is to create culture-shifting dialogue between disciplines, spheres of action, governments, funders and community leaders, practice and theory.

Case study method of conversation and analysis Most design “case studies” are project descriptions and images that focus on the what, not the how—the built project and perhaps its reception and performance. Designers are skilled at presenting the thesis, appearance and materials of their projects; so much so, that it can be difficult to understand whether the project outcomes and process measure up to the image for those who will live with them. The statement of the designer rarely conveys how the project was made, or the perspectives of community leaders, policymakers, scientists and other participants in the process.

Our case studies will place focus on the process—the many collaborators and contingencies—and offer insight into how communities and interdisciplinary teams have attempted to traverse the “valley of death” between ideas and implementation.

We aim to create a case study method that invites analysis and requires participants to shape their own values and strategies—active learning for would-be activist designers and community leaders interested taking on complex challenges. Similar to teaching case studies developed in policy and business schools, we are interested in supporting the creation of case studies that are intentionally open-ended presentations of a compelling situation that carries some conflict and uncertainty, with many different viewpoints included in the reporting, rather than critical essays that offer the authors’ conclusions or a how-to guide. The purpose is to cultivate the users capacity for critical analysis, bias recognition, collaboration, leadership, decision-making and action on challenging issues and projects. We believe that, done well, case research and discussion can help us develop theory from practice, and apply new theory to practice.

Applying to study and document a project Individuals (or pairs) can apply to develop a case for a fee of $50,000 by submitting the following material via this webform in a single pdf file of no more than 20MB:

1) a writing sample—past work that demonstrates capacity for narrative and analytical writing 2) CV or résumé with current contact information 3 a) 2,000 to 3,000-word description of a project that you think would make an interesting case study in community-engaged design, planning or place-keeping, and why (project images are optional) AND / OR 3 b) 500 to 2,000-word response to our outline of the intent of the case study program, including any critique that you think would make it stronger.

An applicant who does not apply with an interest in a particular project (outlined in response to 3a above) may be invited to document a project suggested by someone else. The length of your résumé is less important than your perspective on projects designed in community and capacity to enrich the knowledge base through the medium of case study writing and illistration.

Suggesting a project if you are not applying to write a case study We also welcome suggestions of exemplary projects worthy of deep analysis from colleagues in community and indigenous organizations, movements, public agencies, design and planning practices, and foundations. You can submit a project suggestion (with or without images) via this webform . Recommendations can be of any length, even just a project name and location or link. We can accept file sizes up to 20MB. Please include your contact information in case we would like to reach out to learn more.

Send any questions to [email protected] .

Timeline Applications will be reviewed as they come in until the deadline at 12pm on June 30, 2024. We aim to award all contracts by July 28, 2024, and may award some contracts for early applicants prior to that date. Authors will have 8 months to submit a completed case study (April 1, 2025), with an interim review at roughly 4 months.  

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Student Spotlight: Jamaal Hill

Class Year : May 2024

Degree Program : Master of Nonprofit Organizations (MNO)

What made you choose this area of study?

I have worked in the nonprofit sector for about 15 years. I chose nonprofit management because it offers diverse career opportunities across sectors. This program focuses on essential leadership and management skills like strategic planning, collaboration and board engagement, all of which are necessary for effectively leading and supporting mission-driven organizations. Additionally, studying nonprofit management emphasizes the importance of community engagement and fosters the development of strong relationships with stakeholders. Overall, the MNO program equips individuals with the expertise needed to make a meaningful impact in addressing societal challenges through innovative and sustainable approaches.

Why did you choose CWRU/the Mandel School?

CWRU offers an Employee Education Benefit that covers the cost of tuition, which is an incredible perk of working at the university.

What's your favorite thing about CWRU/the Mandel School or your favorite memory?

My favorite part about the program has been the opportunity to learn from, collaborate with and problem solve with so many amazing thought partners and peers. The professors and guests of the classes are truly heavy hitters in the field, which has elevated my experience.

As a graduating student, what's a piece of advice/encouragement you'd like to share with current students?

Make the most of the expertise and resources available to you. Our professors are seasoned professionals with remarkable experiences, wisdom and extensive networks, and they are eager to share their knowledge with you. Additionally, your classmates bring invaluable experiences and diverse perspectives to the table, enriching your learning experience further.

What are your post graduation plans?

I am employed full-time at CWRU, but I plan to pursue board involvement in the near future.