This article serves as both an état présent of emerging scholarship in the interdisiplinary field of Memory Studies and a conference report following the first MSA Forward interactive workshop which preceded the second annual conference of the Memory Studies Association (MSA) in December 2017. MSA Forward is the postgraduate arm of the Memory Studies Association and offers a platform for exchanging ideas amongst a cohort of emerging scholars engaging with recent developments in Memory Studies and interacting with key academics in the field. The idea of engagement, with its political undertone, draws attention to the political valence and ethical sensitivity of emerging research as evidenced in this article, which contends that if Memory Studies is to be moving forwards as well as looking back, then it is important for emerging scholars as well as established academics to be at the forefront of the field.

Bryan Cheyette is Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Reading, where he directs the Identities and Minorities research group. His comparative research focuses on critical ‘race’ theory, postcolonial literature and theory, diasporic literature, Holocaust testimony, and, more recently, the social history of the ghetto. In January 2019, the Warwick Memory Group invited Bryan Cheyette to give a public lecture on ‘The Ghetto as Travelling Concept’, in the light of his forthcoming A Very Short Introduction to the Ghetto (2020), and a workshop on ‘Unfenced Fields in Academia and Beyond’. In a wide-ranging interview, Bryan Cheyette speaks of the interconnections between Jewish studies and postcolonial studies, bringing these into dialogue with memory discourses and our contemporary moment. Image of Prof Cheyette, photo credit Cesar Rodriguez

Stef Craps is Associate Professor of English Literature at Ghent University, where he directs the Cultural Memory Studies Initiative (CMSI). He is an internationally recognised scholar whose research focuses on postcolonial literatures, trauma theory, transcultural Holocaust memory, and, more recently, climate change fiction. He has published widely on these issues, including in the seminal Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He visited Warwick to deliver a public lecture and graduate workshop for the Warwick Memory Group in October 2017. In a wide-ranging interview, Stef Craps spoke about present and future directions in memory and trauma studies, the differences between transnational and transcultural memories, the ethics and politics of memory (studies), and the challenges faced by the field looking to the future.

This roundtable discussion between Franco-Tunisian author Colette Fellous and her translator Sophie Lewis explores multilingualism and transmedial translation, alongside memories of colonialism and occupation. Fellous recounts her experience of inherited exile as a Tunisian Jew - caught between culpabilité and reconnaissance in relation to French colonialism - while Sophie Lewis shares her thoughts on translating inflected language and diasporic identities.

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