Impact of the Pluralistic Memories Project in Palestine: Preserving Oral History and Enhancing Collective Resilience

The Pluralistic Memories Project in Palestine works on documenting various memories of the Palestinians and their memories about their past and present, and within the historical context of settler colonialism.

The project’s research team was able to document and archive a diverse collection of well-detailed personal interviews with people of different backgrounds and areas. The research team also conducted a survey that targeted a representative sample of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The interviews, alongside the survey, tackled issues related to individual and collective memories of the conflict under settler colonialism.

The main purpose of collecting and archiving this database of memories is to use them as reference for researchers in the field of social sciences in the near future. In addition, this archive seeks behind creating and building networks and cooperative relations between researchers from Birzeit University and their peers in other, local and global, academic institutions.

Whereas it serves standard research purposes, the Pluralistic Memories Project is also a PhD program that offers scholarships for students through University of Lausanne. Two of which are female students from Birzeit University who are now doing their PhD in Anthropology and Social Phycology.

As for this academic aspect, the Pluralistic Memories Project held an academic conference titled “Rethinking Memory Studies” in Birzeit University, which hosted academics and researchers from Palestine and other countries as well.

Furthermore, and in cooperation with Palestinian community organizations, the project conducted several community activities, one of which was a creative writing workshop dedicated to children from Ramallah and its surroundings, while another activity was a series of discussion sessions held students from Birzeit University and other Palestinian universities. These activities discussed topics related to memory life under settler-colonialism, alongside discussions about collective identity.