Participatory Remembrance Education in Koblenz and the Surroundings

The research project Participatory Remembrance Education in Koblenz and the Surroundings (Partizipative Erinnerungspädagogik in Koblenz und Umgebung in German original and PEPiKUm in short) is based at the Koblenz University of Applied Sciences and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2020-2024).

Constituted by a team of social scientists with backgrounds in different disciplines, PEPiKUm explores various fields of collective memory in the respective spatial order, forms of remembrance education, and the concepts of participation. The project enables youth groups to explore self-sought topics related to local memory and history. In these terms, the researcher team collaborates with youth (work) organizations. The co-working approach – blossoming from the participatory research tradition and remaining in the epicenter of the study – indicates the project steps. Hence, young people who participate in PEPiKUm become co-researchers whom we enable to develop their own research questions and tailor microprojects.

Alongside accompanying co-researchers at their meetings, PEPiKUm offers excursions, thematic workshops, and training for research methods. The co-researchers thus gather and analyze data utilizing the qualitative social research tools for data collection proposed by the project team. Simultaneously, the team conducts semi-structured qualitative interviews and group discussions with the co-researchers and further adolescents from ages 14 to 17 to analyze and understand the memory dynamics and mechanisms of youth participation. A diverse data sample – including visual and textual data alongside interviews – has been produced in the field works conducted by the researcher team and co-researcher groups.