“From protests against police brutality to marches against pandemic restrictions, we seem to find ourselves in an era of heightened mobilization on streets across the globe. Many of these movements explicitly engage in “memory politics” – using particular interpretations of history to make sense of and transform the present. We have seen this most clearly in efforts to remove statues that glorify racist and colonial violence. This use of the past for purposes of mobilization or persuasion is neither new nor the exclusive domain of “progressive” actors. But it does seem that the present reality has encouraged scholars of history and memory to pay more careful attention to grassroots agency, just as social movement scholars have become more interested in various uses and meanings of the past.”  

The Urban Room brough people together for the international and interdisciplinary conference that took place in May 2022, where researchers and heritage/memory practitioners studying grassroots action in history joined forced with activists and other members of the community to debate fascinating facts and events, also visiting local heritage sites.