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http://www.anthropologyireland.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/AAIConferenceMemory-andRecoveryCFP.pdfPaul Connerton, among others, has analysed the ways in which societiesstrive to remember and forget. This body of work draws attention to thetechniques by which remembering and forgetting are accomplished anddistinguishes between different forms and functions of forgetting. Focusingon the ‘recovery’ of social memories, this conference examines how memoryis dis- or re-interred through social processes, how recovered memories arechallenged or legitimised, and how processes of recovery relate toparticular historical moments.The idea of ‘recovered memories’ reflects the ambiguity and creativity ofmemory processes, suggesting a reclamation or expression of buried truthsor lost experiences, yet also the possibility of memory being obscured,repressed, re-covered. The term carries with it anxiety about the realityof past experiences and the legitimacy of contemporary claims about them,not least because of controversy surrounding the idea of ‘recoveredmemories’ in individual psychology and therapeutic settings; such memorieslie between shared grief and triumph. ‘Recovery’ is associated withhealing, and the idea that memory can heal, or be healed, is a familiarresponse to individual or collective trauma.‘Recovery’ is currently the goal of many governments and internationalbodies. Within the Republic of Ireland, attempts at economic recovery areaccompanied by the reassessment of collective beliefs about the nation’spast, the Celtic Tiger era and the crisis. Ireland is undertaking it’seconomic recovery in an era of commemorations and anniversaries, from theDublin Lockout to the Easter Rising. Equally in Northern Ireland thesigning of the Ulster Covenant and the Second World War loom large incontested centenary memories that feed into broader European and globalprocesses of remembering.  Such events provide space for the recovery ofmemory, sometimes at the expense of suppressing others, and often with thepotential for personal and collective healing, for contested politicalclaims and ontological challenges, which recovered memories can provide.*We invite contributions on themes related but not restricted to: *●      How do public commemorations and anniversaries engineer the recoveryof social memory? To what extent is this process intentional, consensual,negotiated, or imposed?●      As archaeology unearths elements of the ancient past, how are itsdiscoveries being harnessed to present day concerns and future economicrecovery?●      What would recovery from the recent crisis of capitalism look like?Does ‘recovery’ mean: a resumption of ‘business as usual’; a re-concealmentof problems that have been revealed; a regaining of lost wealth; thehealing of a diseased system? How can remembering be an ‘antidote’ tocurrent economic ills?●      When ‘recovery’ is accepted as a collective national goal, what isit we believe we have lost?●      How does nostalgia shape the kind of memories which are recovered?●      How does ‘recovery’ - as it features in the language of addiction -relate to other, more collective, forms of recovery?●      What events will not be remembered in this period of centenarycelebration? What memories are going to be covered over once again?●      What types of memory are involved in commemoration processes:heritage, national, biographical, embodied, neurological modes of memory?What stages of memory are involved, and what places of memory will becomeimportant in the coming decade and why?●      What is the role of place in conjuring, stabilising and preservingmemory? What places will become important for remembering in the comingdecade and why? Where are these places that define particular relationshipsto the past and what tools can we use to chart the moral geography of such‘lieux de memoires’, e.g. the tomb of the unknown soldier (a clear exampleof recovering what is ‘unrememberable’)? What other sites are important incollective remembering, e.g. archives?Please submit a 300 word abstract with your name, email address andaffiliation to s.carden@qub.ac.uk &#60;s.carden@qub.ac.uk&#62; by Dec 16thDr. Siún CardenQueen's University BelfastE-mail: s.carden@qub.ac.uk