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In cooperation with the Belarusian Institute of Public History, the Center for Belarus and Regional Studies at European Humanities University, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, and Universität Bremen, the Department of Public History at the FernUniversität in Hagen is organizing the Belarus Colloquium in the academic year 2024/2025. This Colloquium aims to create a platform for scholars focusing on Belarus to share and discuss their research.

David Pergl

“Belarusian Democratization Movement and its Manifestations in Memory Activism”

Moderator of the discussion: Dr. Iryna Ramanava, the Center for Belarus and Regional Studies at European Humanities University.

The paper focuses on the dynamic development of symbolic discursive remembering that takes place among memory activists of the Belarusian democratization movement, who use interpretive frameworks of the past to demonstrate the message of their identity, values, and ideas through them. The aim is to understand how diasporic activist groups of Belarusian emigrants try to negotiate and (trans)form their identity between the place of their everyday experience, the transnational space of the diaspora, and their former homeland in acts of remembrance. In addition to a framework analysis of the transcultural dimension of memory in the digital space, I will also try to consider the perspective of everyday memory practice and activism in selected diasporic centers of Belarusian emigration in Lithuania, Poland, and the Czech Republic. In these specific socio-cultural contexts, I want to trace the mechanisms by which opposition activists and movement representatives shape memories of past conflicts, through which they seek to delegitimize the Belarusian regime and create solidarity with the pro-democratization movement.

Short biography

David Pergl is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. He conducts study on the issues of Belarusian national identity, and has undertaking various field studies conducted both in Belarus (2017-2019) and in the Belarusian community in exile (2019-2024). His current research project focuses on the Belarusian democratization movement in exile. He examines the formation of interpretive frames of the past, how memory activists in selected Belarusian diasporic communities shape memories of past conflicts, and how they engage in struggles over memory.