Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 4
The Archives of Memory:
Specific Results from
Research in Serbia
Nicola Mai*
From December 1999 to September 2000, I was the researcher and
coordinator of the Serbian section of the Archives of Memory project.
The project was promoted by the International Organization for
Migration (IOM) and set up in Belgrade and Pristina through a collaboration
between IOM and ARCS – ARCI Cultura e Sviluppo, an Italian Non
Governmental Organization (NGO) for which I then worked. I was
requested to contribute to the project, in part as a continuation of activities
already begun with young Kosovar Albanians during the months in which
they were refugees in Albania, and to assist with the material and documentation
gathered through contact with the refugee population during
that time. 1 From the earliest days of our living and working with the
refugees, we became aware of their need to remember and reconstruct
their experience of war, displacement and social antagonism. ARCS
responded to this need by offering cultural events such as concerts, photographic
exhibitions and various recreational activities like writing, painting
and theatre. It was hoped that these events would stimulate individual
memories of family-related and personal events, while at the same time
allowing the group to reconstruct their experiences and revive their individual
memories together.
* Nicola Mai, anthropologist, now Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Sussex Centre for
Migration Research, University of Sussex
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