Memory Landscapes: Reclaiming Cultural Power for Health Equity

Today’s sweeping political and technological changes present unprecedented challenges to public memory. At this turning point, exchanging global experiences and strategies is of paramount importance. For example, strategies for shifting and securing input from marginalized communities within public commemoration; experiences with the power and challenges of social media networks; efforts to safeguarding the integrity of historical discourse in the face of new political pressures. Timely exchange of learnings is essential for creating an inclusive, participatory and accurate public memory, and ultimately for driving social justice, healing intergenerational trauma and fostering belonging necessary for leading healthy lives.  

The sessions will seek to explore tried and tested memory-making strategies and enabling conditions used for shaping shared historical infrastructure and measuring their health and wellbeing effects. Together, the cohort will examine underlying enabling conditions, such as institutional power shifts, counter-memory activism, community leadership, and digital safeguards that are required for stewarding public memory across spaces.

Participants will bring insight based on existing efforts and research for transforming public institutions and memoryscapes, and will learn from 4-6 case studies around the world seeking to embed belonging, wellbeing and health equity into everyday landscapes that hold and transmit public memory. These case studies will represent a diverse set of approaches and contexts, such as place-based memory work, digital landscapes, traveling and transcultural memory, counter-memory strategies, pluralist and regenerative approaches.

More information about the program is available here.

Thanks to the generous support of our partners, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the $6,000 USD program fee is waived for successful applicants. This includes all program activities, meals, and accommodation at Schloss Leopoldskron.

Additionally, travel awards are available to help offset travel expenses. Program participants will receive a fixed amount based on the expected cost of economy-class travel from their location.

Session Dates: December 1-6, 2026

Application Deadline: July 30, 2026 (17:00 Central European Time)

If you have any exceptional circumstances that inhibit your application through this online portal, please get in touch with us at mpombo@salzburgglobal.org.