MeTC examines how people in networked societies recall the recent past (ReP) in times of economic recession through the lens of social media (SoM). It explores the connections between crises and memory politics by investigating Facebook, Instagram, and internet forums in Argentina, Spain, and Greece (ASG) – three countries which transitioned to democracy between 1974 and 1982 and experienced optimism and prosperity in the proceeding years before they suffered from economic crises. MeTC is a comparative, interdisciplinary historical and digital-ethnographic project which links two methods of digital ethnography (invisible observation; immersive cohabitation) with oral history and intermedial and multimodal analysis. The project aims to: a) analyse memories of the ReP during crises in SoM in ASG; b) employ its own SoM to trigger discussions on the relationships between the present and the ReP on the basis of stimuli gathered through archival research; c) scrutinise the politics of these SoM-driven mnemonic communities through oral interviews from people engaged in the formation of the politics of digital collective memory in ASG. MeTC provides an adaptable model for how historians and media scholars can turn embarrassment in the face of the SoM-driven explosion of amateur historical storytelling on the web into a source of inspiration and a channel of communication among these two communities of scholars and the public. Drawing on the host’s interdisciplinary capacity and synergies with experts in ASG, MeTC promises to provide a bold academic and social impact in these ways: a) publication in journals, and the delivery of a hybrid workshop and seminars; b) interaction with popular audiences through SoM, a photo exhibition and open public speaking events organised with immigrants from ASG in Sweden. Ultimately, MeTC will enable research on (digital) memory to be a vehicle for interaction between the academy and society through culture and education.

This research project is a study in global history. It explores how diplomatic practices and foreign relations were shaped in the pluralistic, multi-centric, open geography of maritime Southeast Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. In this period, exchange between local polities and aspiring European colonial powers flourished. The project uses the rich history of negotiations and cross-cultural communication between local Southeast Asian polities and various actors from Europe to integrate practices of balancing power relations and local indigenous traditions into a nuanced global history of diplomacy. Although foreign relations are widely regarded as an important vector for cultural exchange, and while embassies have emerged as a favoured site for studying cultural encounters, little is known about the ways in which transregional interactions shaped the very principles and practices of diplomatic dealings over the course of this transformative period. The project will introduce the concept of the diplomatic encounter which allows to study relevant processes and practices in their own time and under consideration of their specific political culture. It compares different acts of negotiation including the foreign relations of insular Muslim chiefdoms, colonial rivalries, the diplomatic strategies of small city states and the impact of expanding empires in the region. Re-addressing early modern diplomatic encounters in South East Asia in diverse sources written in various languages will thus serve to overcome binaries in diplomatic history and ultimately contribute to a new narrative of diplomatic history as demanded by leading scholars in the field. The project will be hosted at the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, a leading interdisciplinary research environment with an existing and steadily growing focus on Southeast Asia.

The European Union supports several directives to protect groundwater from hazardous contaminants, including radionuclides. This project aims to increase understanding of uranium retention pathways in calcite mediated by iron sulphides and microorganisms in a deep crystalline rock-groundwater system. This will be achieved by implementing a comprehensive experimental approach involving various isotope proxies in minerals and secondary, deep groundwaters, integration with microbiological studies, spectroscopic techniques, and hydrogeochemical modelling. The results will help to decipher microbial signatures in modern and ancient redox processes and microbial impact on the mobility of trace elements in groundwaters in the vicinity of the future granitic type nuclear repositories.