Announcement

Welcome to this autumn symposium of the Centre for research in Memory, Testimony and Historiography (MYTH). The symposium will be held in Arken, Helikon (A202), at 9.30 on 14.11.2025.

The theme of this symposium is the ethics of testimony. Researchers in history and the human sciences often find themselves in the following conundrum. On the one hand, how should one take into consideration the experiential authority of witnesses, and at the same time be able to maintain a critical ethos different from merely conveying someone’s memories and experiences? On the other hand, are not relations to witnesses of atrocity and violence different from investigating what kinds of contents these witnesses betray? These are questions and problems that are relevant to the human sciences today. They are particularly important when it comes to research on minorities, which often involves giving voice to the experiences of different groups based on witness accounts. For many minorities, archival material is lacking, which makes memoirs and oral accounts particularly important. This symposium focuses on conceptual questions connected to the ethics of testimony.

We are proud to have Sibylle Schmidt and Claudia Welz as guest lecturers at this event. Everyone who is interested in the topic is welcome to participate in the symposium. This MYTH event is funded by the Minority Research Center at Åbo Akademi University.

The program of the symposium:

9.30-9.45 Welcome to “The Ethics of Testimony”: The leaders of MYTH

9.45-10.45 Guest lecture: Sibylle Schmidt “Into that Darkness? On some Moral and Hermeneutical Problems of Perpetrator Testimony” (Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Wuppertal)

10.45-11.00 Pause

11.00-12.00 Guest lecture (via Zoom): Claudia Welz “Difficulties in Testifying to Trauma: How to Account for the Resonances of the Past?” (Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Aarhus University)

12.00-13.30 Lunch and coffee

13.30-14.00 Presentation: Lovisa Andén “Truth and Silences in Belated Testimonies from Soviet Karelia” (Associate Professor of Philosophy, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, Senior Researcher in Philosophy, Åbo Akademi University)

14.00-14.30 Presentation: Maria Björkholm “Preserving Truth in an Age of Ideological Mobilization” (Doctoral Researcher in Philosophy, Åbo Akademi University)

14.30-14.45 Pause

14.45-15.45 Book Panel: on Jonas Ahlskog, Testimony and Historical Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2025), and Natan Elgabsi, Existential Ethics and the Philosophy of Historiography (Amsterdam University Press, 2025). Commentators Victoria Fareld (University of Stockholm), Hugo Strandberg (Åbo Akademi University), Lovisa Andén (UiT – The Arctic University of Norway)

15.45 -16.00 Closing words: The leaders of MYTH

16.00-17.00 Coffee and Cake

18.30 Dinner (please contact the organizers if you are interested in joining)