This open access book provides a concise introduction to a critical development in memory studies. A global memory formation has emerged since the 1990s, in which memories of traumatic histories in different parts of the world, often articulated in the terms established by Holocaust memory, have become entangled, reconciled, contested, conflicted and negotiated across borders. As historical actors and events across time and space become connected in new ways, new grounds for contest and competition arise; claims to the past that appeared de-territorialized in the global memory formation become re-territorialized - deployed in the service of nationalist projects. This poses challenges to scholarship but also to practice: How can we ensure that shared or comparable memories of past injustice continue to be grounds for solidarity between different memory communities? In chapters focusing on Europe, East Asia and Africa, five scholars respond to these challenges from a range of disciplinary perspectives in the humanities.

Jie-Hyun Lim is Professor of Transnational History and Director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University, Seoul, Korea, and Principal Investigator of the international research project Mnemonic Solidarity: Colonialism, War and Genocide in the Global Memory Space (2017-2024). He has published widely on nationalism and Marxism in comparison, Polish history, transnational history and global memory in books and journals. Eve Rosenhaft is Professor of German Historical Studies at the University of Liverpool, UK. She has taught and published widely on aspects of German social history since the eighteenth century, while her public engagement work includes collaborations with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Imperial War Museum London and the Wiener Holocaust Library.