Editor's Introduction

Abstract

This thematic issue of the journal was conceived during a symposium at Victoria University of Wellington in November 2018 on the theme of ‘The Family as Mnemonic Community’. At the symposium, funded through a New Zealand Marsden grant for the project ‘The Missing Link’, a group of international and multidisciplinary researchers shared their investigations into family memory and discussed four broad questions:

- what kinds of stories or information do families pass down the generations?

- how are family stories about the past transmitted, remembered, and received?

- why do family memories and stories about the past matter in the present?

- and what are the advantages and disadvantages of different scholarly approaches?

Five out of six of the authors in this issue presented papers at the symposium, and their articles are revised or reconceptualised for publication here. The remaining author was invited to submit a paper once we scoped out the majority of submissions and decided on the shape of the volume.