Phd – HDR-Habilitation // sarah.gensburger@cnrs.fr
Political Scientist, French National Center for Scientific Research

My research interests lie at the intersection of political science, ethnographic sociology and contemporary historiographic issues. I am interested in the social dynamic of memory. Since 2015, I have been working on the memorialization process in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Paris, as well as on the social appropriations of the past by visitors at memorials and commemorative sites and exhibitions. During the past two years, I have been studying the transformation of the contemporary state, the governmentality of memory and the way it has become a category of public intervention in western democracies. Finally, and as a micro-social historian, I have been studying everyday life, housing issues and social networks in Paris during World War Two, at the intersection of urban history and Holocaust history.

Some recent videos

“Memory  dynamics in a time of crisis”, dMSA, December 2020.

“Curating Covid : Material and Visual Cultures of the Pandemic”, University. of Michigan, December 2020.

Paper Trails, Memorials in an Age of Anxiety, Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, February 2021.