Improving mutual understanding among Europeans by working through troubled pasts

The initial idea and theoretical starting point for the project is that European cities are complex cultural environments, and they are shaped by global flows of media, capital and people. They are built on layers of local and national history and religious practices, complicated by the memories and traces of past conflicts, now subject to re-development and re-branding in competitive, mediatized, and religiously plural environments. This project group assembles an interdisciplinary team to examine how 4-5 cities with long imperial and immigration histories are being reshaped by contemporary urban transformation. They complement each other by highlighting different aspects of European memories and identities, and we have a preliminary list of possible cites/themes to be investigated: Mission and oil, pietism and consumerism (Stavanger); churches/sexualities and post-colonial relations (Utrecht/Amsterdam); cultural and religious pluralism vs. national homogeneity (Berlin/Leipzig); forms of solidarity in a hyper-diverse, hyper-capitalist social environment (East London); tensions between neo-communist state/atheism vs corporate urban reconstruction and new Pentecostal Christianity (Bucharest). We will shed new light on how the past is mobilized in these transformations, which generate new forms of inclusion and exclusion and pose new challenges to security and solidarity, by examining how these challenges are articulated and addressed through cultural and religious activities, ranging from social media communication to political statements,museum displays to theatre productions. We will work with diverse APs (including human rights, congregations (churches/mosques), homelessness, community theatre, heritage and broadcast organisations) to stimulate public debate on how to address these challenges.