The Memory Network in Brazil

After developing The Memory Network in Malaysia, the Netherlands and the USA, Principal Investigator Dr Sebastian Groes is now forging links with Brazilian colleagues specialising in memory. Groes was awarded a Santander Scholarship to meet and discuss development of the project with colleagues working with an appetite for multidisciplinary work. In Rio de Janeiro, Groes will meet the anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, the philosopher Dr Francisco Ortega, the psycholinguist Marcus Amaia, the neuroloinguist Aniela França. In Salvador he’ll discuss the Memory Network’s research with neuropsychologist Professor Neander Abreu and the anthropologist Claudia Martina, amongst others. He already has set up links with colleagues at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Allegre), including the famous pioneer in neurobiology, Ivan Izquierdo. In England, Groes is meeting with the Professor of Psychometrics, Igor G. Menezes (Federal University of Bahia, Salvador), currently an Academic Visitor at the University of Cambridge. The visit to Brazil is intended to explore new funding bids in 2015.

On the 9th October 2013, the Memory Network invited Wendy Moncur, reader in Socio-Digital Interaction at the University of Dundee, Stacey Pitsillides a PhD candidate in Design at Goldsmiths working on Digital Death, and writer Adam Roberts, to discuss ‘Memory in the Digital Age’ at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. The event tackled questions about how, in an increasingly digital context, we are remembered after we die, an issue central to discussion around the European Court of Justice’s ruling earlier this month that Google can be forced to erase links to content about individuals on the Web; as this ruling illustrates, the 19th century legal concept of the ‘right to be forgotten’ takes on new meaning and relevance in relation to the digital self. In this video, our speakers explore how digital memory works, how their work tackles the questions it raises, and why this is so vital.