1st International Conference DIM2015
The Commonwealth and its People: Diasporas, Identities, Memories
24-26 June 2015, University of Malta Valletta Campus
St.Paul's Street VLT 1216, Malta Valletta, Malta
SUPPORTED BY THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE , CULTURE AND L OCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE MINISTRY FOR EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF MALTA
(Programme)
The conference follows a set of themes (Departure; Memory and Nostalgia; Identity; and Return) which will help to shape an art exhibition exploring the
aspects of Diasporas, Identities and Memories.
The exhibition will be hosted in Saint James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in November-December 2015.
24 June 2015
9.00-10.30
Session Chair:
Georgina Portelli
Opening
Addresses by dignitaries (Hon Minister Owen Bonnici, Hon. Minister Evarist Bartolo, Mrs Phyllis Muscat,
Prof Juanito Camilleri) [tbc]
Georgina Portelli, Alexander Debono (Malta): The conference and the exhibition
Great Partnerships: memories, identities, cultures and the search for meaning in the Commonwealth and its
communities
Terry Barringer (UK) - KEYNOTE
10.30-11:00
11:00-12:30
Cultural heritage, identity formation and change in a globalizing world
Session Chair:
Lothar Jordan
(session convened by Mrs Iskra Panevska, Memory of the World, UNESCO)
The Caribbean: the making of its culture, identity and contribution to the global voice
Guest Speaker: Mrs Joie Springer (Barbados)
Panel discussion: Identities at risk: Protecting cultural and documentary heritage in times of war
Panelists: Dr Gilly Carr (UK), Ms Emilija Nikolic (Serbia), Prof. Henry Frendo (Malta), Ms Joie Springer (Barbados)
It-tluq  Departure
12:30-13:30
Lunch break
13:30-15:30
Forced diasporas: The Maltese Slave Experience in Ottoman Lands between the 16th and 18th centuries
William Zammit (University of Malta)
Session Chair:
Emily MarkFitzGerald
Dominant memories and dominating heritage: contested legacies of war in the British Channel Islands
Dr Gilly Carr, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Cambridge, UK
Migration, Diaspora, and the Slave Trade
Mark Joseph O. Asamani (Mount Crest University, Ghana)
Analysis of data from Maltese Passport Applications held at the National Archives of Malta: A new digital resource
Mark Caruana (Melbourne, Australia)
[Paper will be presented by Martin Hampton, Friends of the National Archives]
And I never saw another butterfly: art, literature and photography related to children in armed conflicts as an
educational tool and archival evidence.
Alice Nemcova (OSCE archives, Prague, Czech Republic) tbc
Memory and Nostalgia
Il-memorja u n-nostalgija 
15.30-16:00
16:30-18:00
Memory, music and nostalgia
Session Chair:
Andy O’Dwyer
From the Beatles to the Spice Girls: On the Recognisability of British Pop
Dr John Ashley Burgoyne (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - KEYNOTE
Communicating by proxy: Sound-souvenirs as mediators of community
Andrew Pace (University of Mancester, UK)
Sounds of Malta around the Globe
Dr Toni Sant (St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, Malta)
Letters from home – The distribution of music and audio-messages amongst Maltese communities around the world
in the twentieth century
Andrew Alamango (University of Malta)
18:30
Hosted by Adrian
Grima, University
of Malta
The richness of capturing memory:
A trio of books and a digital archive presented by their authors and editors in the National
Library of Malta
From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme (Maja Kominko, editor)
Indian Diasporic Literature and Cinema (Nilufer Bharuca)
Songs for a Blind Date (Josephine Burden)
Diasporic Literary Archives (David Sutton)
9.00-10.30
Session Chair:
Anne Gilliland
(cont’d)
Memory and Nostalgia
Il-memorja u n-nostalgija 
25 June 2015
Facets of memory
Archives - Curators of an island's collective memory. The Commonwealth island of Malta
Professor Stanley Fiorini (University of Malta) - KEYNOTE
'Engaging' the Global Irish Diaspora: Migration and Public History since the 1960s
Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald (University College Dublin, Ireland)
The Indian Diaspora in the Commonwealth: Remembering and Forgetting
Professor Nilufer E. Bharucha (University of Mumbai, India)
Documentation and the Materialization of Identity
Dr Marc Kosciejew (Unversity of Malta)
L-identita  Identity
10.30-11:00
11:00-12:30
Identity: Perception and transmission
Session Chair:
Mark Kosciejew
White British diasporas in East / Central Africa
Alistair Tough (University of Glasgow, UK)
Broadcasting dynamics: Contributor to and beneficiary of national identity
Professor Saviour Chircop (University of Malta)
Migrating Memories: Transdisciplinary Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching About Diasporic Memory, Identity and
Human Rights in Archival Studies
Dr Anne Gilliland and Hariz Halilovich (USA/Australia)
Transmitting Albanian Cultural Identity in the Age of the Internet
Bendis Pustina (Ministry of Culture of Albania)
Ancestral identity and ancestral memory in a crisis situation: historical and theoretical analysis and sharing of
experience
Stefka Piskuliyska, Dorothea Tabakova (Univeristy of Sofia, Bulgaria)
12:30-13:30
Lunch break
Ir-ritorn  Return
13:30-15:00
Literature, art, personal memories and identity
Session Chair:
Alexander
Debono
The Diasporic Literary Archives Network and the Commonwealth
David Sutton (University of Reading, UK)
Forgetting for Getting a Better Life – Jhumpa Lahiri’s Lowland- an Analysis
Dr Shruty Das (Berhampur University, India)
Land as art, landscape as document: art collections at the National Library of Wales
Gareth Lloyd Roderick (National University of Wales)
Writing the Story: Memoir, Diaspora and Qualitative Research
Dr Josephine Burden (Australia/Malta)
The inhabited memory
Virginia Monteforte (France/Malta)
15.00-15:00
15:30-18:00
Memory Going Digital: Challenges and Promises
Session Chair:
Gillian Oliver
GO::DH and the formation of the Digital Humanities
Professor Daniel O'Donnell (University of Lethbridge, Canada) - KEYNOTE
The future of cultural heritage
Professor Yasar Tonta (Hacettepe University, Turkey)
The Endangered Archives Programme: preserving fragile memory
Maja Kominko (ARCADIA fund, UK)
Closing discussion: How to capture and preserve better the memories of the
Commonwealth? The input of the conference to CHoGM People’s forum
Invited Speaker: Raymond Xerri (Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Malta)
Malta's Diaspora, Malta Government Diaspora structures and outcome of Riga Diaspora Conference
19:00
Conference dinner (vouchers sold at registration)
26 June 2015: Workshops (Morning 9:00-13:00; Afternoon 14:00-18:00)
W1 Morning
Session on UNESCO's MoW submission process
Joie Springer (Memory of the World, UNESCO)
The Memory of Human Rights: Freedom of the Press - Historical Outline and
Documentation
(Prof. Lothar Jordan, Chair of the Sub-Committee on Education and Research of the UNESCO Memory of the World
Programme [MoW]) in cooperation with Dr Marc Kosciejew and Dr William Zammit, University of Malta
9.00
9.10-10:00
10.00-10:30
10.30-11:00
11.00-12:00
12.00-12:30
12.30-13:00
W2 Morning
Welcome
UNESCO's MoW submission process (Joie Springer)
Introduction: Memory of the World, Human Rights, Freedom of the Press
Coffee break
Examples: Freedom of the Press and documents
(L. Jordan, M. Kosciejew, W. Zammit, D. Sutton)
Outlines of an online publication
Discussing possibilities of a concrete project as a follow-up to the conference
Sound and Vision Heritage: The Way Forward for Malta
9.30
9.45-10.30
10:30:10-45
10:45-11:45
11:45-12:00
Opening by dignitaries
Andrew Alamango presenting his recent Master research:
Scenarios for Preserving the National Memory Captured in Sound and Vision Materials
Coffee break
Panel discussion chaired by Georgina Portelli
Panelists: Alexander Grech, Andy O’Dwyer, Ashley Borgoyne, Caldon Merceica [tbc], Charles
Farrugia, Gillian Oliver, Vicki Ann Cremona)
Conclusions