Collaboration between ICLA and UNESCO Memory of the World Programme

           

A formal cooperation agreement between the AILC-ICLA and the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme (MoW) was signed on 29 July 2025 within a Special Session of the XXIV International Seoul Congress.

The collaboration focuses on the international study of the intersections of documentary heritage (including the International Memory of the World Register) and literature, and on sharing knowledge to enhance international dialogue and mutual understanding. In particular, we have agreed to cooperate in the fields of:

• Translations, to develop jointly a “Manifesto for Safeguarding the Memory of Translators and Translations”, and to reflect on various aspects in the field of the history of literature, documentary heritage, translations, and translators, including diasporic translators;
• Lost Memory, through the participation in the Working Group of the MoW Sub-Committee on Education and Research (SCEaR), “Lost Memory: Research on the Reconstruction of Lost and Dispersed Libraries” (working title) – Find out more about the work on Lost Memory;
• Metaphors of Memory, through events that will help develop understanding of the cultural contexts of Memory of the World – Read about the conference on Metaphors of Memory, Comparative Literature and Heritage and consult the Call for Papers;
• International Memory of the World Register, with the ICLA providing or helping identify, when required, expertise in the evaluation of nominations for the International MoW Register that concern literature. The inscriptions of literary documents and collections into the Register can be objects of research.
• Joint publications, including joint volumes or articles on comparative literature and documentary heritage in the SCEaR Newsletter;

Further fields of cooperation continue to be explored, and include work on Indigenous heritage and on oral and non-scripted literatures. More information to follow.

As part of the collaboration, a series of online events – The AILC-ICLA/Memory of the World Series – will start in Spring 2026 and will include lectures, seminars and conferences. The Series is hosted by the Centre for Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London. 

More news will be added here as the work develops. In the meantime, ICLA members interested in participating in any of these areas are invited to contact Lucia Boldrini.

 

Some historical notes on the collaboration between ICLA and the UNESCO MoW programme

The initiative builds on the steps taken since the 2016 ICLA Congress in Vienna, where the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO for Communication and Information, Frank La Rue was invited to speak at the Congress Opening Ceremony. The following year, ICLA President Longxi Zhang took part in a seminar at Yasnaya Polyana, the estate of Leo Tolstoy, dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Memory of the World programme (MoW). Covid paused the collaboration, and the ICLA is grateful to Professor Lothar Jordan, Chair of the SCEaR, for having taken the initiative to resume and embed this partnership between MoW and ICLA.

The official signing of the cooperation agreement took place within a Special Session of the Seoul Congress, in which talks were given by Jan Bos, Chair of the MoW International Advisory Committee (IAC); Lothar Jordan, Chair of SCEaR; Lucia Boldrini, ICLA President 2022-2025; and E.V. Ramakrishnan, Chair of the ICLA Standing Research Committee on South Asian Literatures and Cultures. The document was signed by Jan Bos, Lothar Jordan, Joie Springer (Chair of the Register Sub-Committee, RSC) on behalf of the UNESCO MoW; and, om behalf of the ICLA, by Lucia Boldrini, Ipshita Chanda (ICLA Secretary, 2022-25) and Youngmin Kim (Chair of the Organizing Committee of the XXIV International ICLA Congress and Chair of the ICLA Standing Research Committee on Translation Studies).

Watch the video of the Special Session “Memory of the World: A Cooperation between the ICLA and the UNESCO Documentary Heritage Programme” at the Seoul Congress.

Links

SCEaR Newsletter 2016, with the account of the MoW session at the 2016 Vienna Congress

SCEaR Newsletter 2017/3 (September), with the account of the Seminar on Translators, Translations and Memory at Yasnaya Polyana

SCEaR Newsletter 2025/1 (September), with an account of the session "Building Bridges between Memory of the World and the Academic World" at the Seoul Congress, when the cooperation agreement was signed.