In this talk, I present ongoing work with communities whose cultural memory fall outside of official heritage practice. The historic ‘Rum’ (Greek-speaking) population of Istanbul lives with a hostile history. The current government mobilises the Conquest of Constantinople of 1453 as a proud motif of Turkish national identity, expressed in museum displays and the management of Byzantine heritage in the city. Twentieth-century persecution further alienated the community, leading many of its members to emigrate. My research involves walking, talking, filming and recording with community members to explore and map their memories, building an online resource. The purpose is threefold: to engage with heritages at risk of disappearance; to give voice to communities; and to emphasise and valorise personal, affective and individual understandings of heritage, expanding conventional paradigms and providing counterpoints to state-level heritage.

Gönül Bozoglu is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow at Newcastle University, UK, where she undertakes research across heritage, memory, and museum studies, often combining anthropological methods with digital practice and filmmaking. She is the author of the book Museums, Emotion and Memory Culture: the politics of the past in Turkey (2019), published by Routledge Research in Museum Studies.

Dr Gönül Bozoglu is currently the HRC/CDHR Visiting Fellow in Digital Humanities Public Culture.