Commemorations and other political rituals are key components of a nation’s cultural memory, crucial for the construction and reinforcement of ideological, ethnic, economic, gender, and other identities.

The construction of cultural memory and cultural identities are central themes of memory studies which analyze the different processes of remembrance and forgetting that occur at the individual, group and societal level.

Research in this field has rapidly developed through an interdisciplinary approach over the last twenty years, building upon such diverse bodies of scholarship such as history, cultural studies, literature, linguistics, psychology, cognitive sciences, ethnology, and political science.