The QEAST project explores memory activism and the cultural heritage of LGBTIQ+ communities in Southeastern and Eastern Europe, which have so far been particularly overlooked internationally. By analyzing regional grassroots archives and festivals, the project highlights how queer communities have been erased from official histories while persistently developing their own forms of memory activism and infrastructures of remembrance. In the context of a new wave of anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives in global and local politics—which often portray queerness as a newly invented and imported phenomenon—understanding memory activism as a way of inscribing minority narratives into local collective memory and resisting erasures becomes all the more crucial.

Combining archival research with ethnography, QEAST will map and analyze strategies of memory pioneers during socialism as well as contemporary memory projects of LGBTQ+ archival networks and festivals in the region. The project aims to develop a conceptual framework for understanding the dynamics of the production, transmission, and political uses of queer memory. Moving away from Western-centric understandings of LGBTQ+ communities in Southeastern and Eastern Europe, it uncovers alternative regional histories of LGBTQ+ activism, forms of activism, and theoretical production.

This research approach not only generates new knowledge about LGBTQ+ histories of Europe but also opens up a broader understanding of heritage preservation among other minority communities. In doing so, the project contributes to more inclusive and diverse perspectives on collective memory frameworks and cultural heritage, while strengthening the international visibility of research that connects scholarship with issues of social justice and memory.

Securing funding for the large-scale, five-year QEAST project marks the latest achievement of the CCRS and represents a valuable contribution to the development of a regional cultural studies research platform, which the Center has so far built through national program and project funding as well as other international projects in the fields of cultural and memory studies.

✨ We warmly congratulate our MEMPOP colleague Jasmina Šepetavc on this outstanding achievement!