About the project
Analyzing shared memories in diasporic communities
MEMODIAS project investigates how memory helps people in exile adapt to new environments and maintain connections with their homeland. It focuses on the Afghan and Somali diasporas in Italy and the USA, exploring how globalization affects their memories and identities.
The project highlights the role of diasporas in sharing and shaping transnational cultural memories. Recent developments in memory studies emphasize that globalization allows memories to travel and mix, creating a blend of local and global memories.
However, most research has focused on individual diasporas or general global memory trends, rather than the interactions between different diasporas. MEMODIAS addresses this gap by studying the Somali and Afghan diasporas, which have experienced significant migration due to political violence and state collapse.
The project examines how these diasporas respond to changes in their home countries, such as instability or potential development, and how these changes affect their memories of conflict, exile, settlement in the receiving countries, and return. It uses tools from various fields, including Memory and Migration/Diaspora studies, Media, Art and Performance studies, Gender studies, Cultural studies, and Critical Global studies.
Team
Principal investigator
Gianluca Gatta
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow
Short bio
Gianluca Gatta (1979) is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Milan (Italy). Before undertaking the MEMODIAS research project on diasporic memories within Afghan and Somali communities in the United States and Italy, he has taught and conducted research in Italy and Japan. His work draws on ethnography, biographical interviews, and creative methods in the fields of migration and mobility sociology and anthropology. He has carried out studies on the reception of migrants upon arrival in Lampedusa (Italy); on third places and sociability in the Mediterranean context; and on memory and subjectivity in Italy and Tunisia. He is also a founding member of the Archive of Migrant Memories (AMM), for which he coordinated Work Package 3 on contemporary migrations within the Horizon 2020 project ITHACA – Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency.