Staff Profile

Background

I completed my PhD at Cardiff University in 2002 and held my first lecturing post at the University of Bath. I then taught memory, media and German Studies at the University of Birmingham for twelve years before joining the Department of Media, Culture, Heritage at Newcastle University in January 2017.

Qualifications

LLB

MA

PhD

PGCHE

Memberships

Association of Critical Heritage Studies

Memory Studies Association

Association of German Studies

Women in German Studies

Languages

English (native)

German (near-native)

Research Interests

My research expertise is in the politics of remembering in contemporary culture. My interdisciplinary work research bridges cultural studies, memory studies, heritage studies, gender studies, and media studies. It addresses both tangible and intangible heritage in terms of contemporary memory cultures, with particular focus on the UK and the German contexts from the post-War period to today, and with special emphasis on gender. I am particularly interested in how challenging histories are represented, contested and mediated through different forms of memory and what this tells us about our understandings of history, heritage and identity.

Principal Research Grants and Research Leadership

2018, AHRC Standard Grant ‘Knowing the Secret Police: Secrecy and Knowledge in East German Society’, in collaboration with Anselma Gallinat, Newcastle University and Sara Jones, University of Birmingham. Co-Investigator and Convenor of ‘Memory Work’ strand (£970,000).

2016, AHRC WWI Engagement Centre Award: ‘Voices of War and Peace’. Co-Investigator and Convenor of ‘Commemoration’ strand (£500,000).

2014, AHRC WWI Engagement Centre Award: ‘Voices of War and Peace’. Co-Investigator and Convenor of ‘Commemoration’ strand (£372,000).

2013, AHRC Exploratory Award, Care for the Future: ‘The Significance of the Centenary’. Principal Investigator. Steering Group: University of Birmingham, Cardiff University, Sheffield University, Historic Royal Palaces, National Library of Wales (£27,671).

2011, AHRC Networking Grant: ‘Silence, Memory and Empathy in Museums and at Historic Sites’. Principal Investigator. Steering Group: University of Birmingham, Cardiff University, Imperial War Museum, Historic Royal Palaces (£33,345).

2011, DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Research Grant: ‘Zeitgeist: What does it Mean to be German in the Twenty-first Century?’ Co-investigator and Convener of ‘History and Memory’ strand (£64,000).

2011, AHRC Early Career Fellowship: September-December, Principal Investigator (£26,842).

Undergraduate

I run an undergraduate module called 'Memory Matters: Mediating Present Pasts for the Future'.

Postgraduate Taught Teaching

I am part of a team that delivers modules for Museum, Galleries and Heritage Studies.

Postgraduate Research Supervision

I welcome postgraduate researchers who want to work in any of the areas relating to my research:

• the politics of remembering
• media of memory
  
• memorialisation and commemoration
• intangible heritage
  
• gender and museums
  
• cultural theory

• Sayner J, Lloyd K, Galani A, Mason R. Experiencing mixed emotions in the museum: empathy, affect, and memory in visitors' responses to histories of migration. In: Smith LJ; Wetherell M; Campbell G, ed. Emotion, Affective Practices and the Past in the Present. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018, pp.124-148.
• Kidd J, Sayner J. Unthinking remembrance? Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red and the significance of centenaries. Cultural Trends 2018, 27(2), 68-82.
• Mason R, Sayner J. Bringing museal silence into focus: eight ways of thinking about silence in museums. International Journal of Heritage Studies 2018, 25(1), 5-20.
• Sayner J, Mason R. Gendering 'the other Germany': Resistant and Residual Narratives on Stauffenbergstraße, Berlin. In: Grahn W; Wilson RJ, ed. Gender and Heritage: Performance, Place and Politics. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018, pp.185-206.
• Peitsch H, Sayner J. Tendentiousness and Topicality: Buchenwald and Antifascism as Sites of GDR memory. German Politics and Society 2015, 33(1), 100-118.
• Sayner J. Reframing Antifascism: Memory, Genre and the Life Writings of Greta Kuckhoff. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
• Sayner J. Communicating History: The Archived Letter and Memories of “The Red Orchestra”. In: Fulbrook, M; Port, A, ed. Becoming East Germans: Socialist Structures and Sensibilities after Hitler. Berghahn, 2013, pp.79-98.
• Sayner J. Verehrter Gen. Ulbricht: Negotiations of Self and Socialist Identity in Greta Kuckhoff's Letters. In: Clarke, D; Goodbody, A, ed. The Self in Transition: East German Autobiographical Narratives. Rodopi, 2013, pp.33-46.
• Sayner J. Representations of Flight and Expulsion in East German Prose Works by Bill Niven. Modern Language Review 2017, 112(4), 1038-1040.
• Sayner J. Reframing Antifascism: Greta Kuckhoff as Author, Commentator and Critic. In: Saunders,A; Pinfold,D, ed. Remembering and Rethinking the GDR: Multiple Perspectives and Plural Authenticities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp.51-66.
• Sayner J. Gendering the Memoirist: Antifascism and The Politics of Life-Writing. In: Brechtken,M, ed. Life Writing and Political Memoir – Lebenszeugnisse und Politische Memoiren. V&R unipress, 2012, pp.243-58.
• Sayner J. Between Denigration, Idealization and Historicization: Memories of Nazism and Everyday Antifascism. In: Clarke,D;Wölfel,U, ed. Remembering the German Democratic Republic: Divided Memory in a United Germany. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp.237-48.
• Sayner J. Educating Educators of Memory. Journal for Educational Media, Memory and Society 2011, 3(2), 137-54.
• Sayner J. Living Antifascism: Greta Kuckhoff’s writings in Die Weltbühne. In: Nehru,M;Jones,S, ed. Writing Under Socialism. Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, 2011, pp.75-91.
• Sayner J. 'Ich schäme mich meiner Augen': Photography and Autobiographical Identities in Grete Weil’s Leb ich denn, wenn andere leben. In: Tate,D; Woods,R, ed. German Life Writing in the Twentieth Century. A Volume of Essays. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010.
• Sayner J. The Organic Intellectual: The Public and Political Impact of Greta Kuckhoff 1945-1949. In: Braun,R;Marvyn,L, ed. Cultural Impact: Theoretical and Practical Issues of Reception in the German-Speaking World. New York: Camden House, 2010, pp.227-42.
• Sayner J. The Personal and the Political: Remembering Adam Kuckhoff, Remembering Resistance. Antifaschismus Revisited: Geschichte – Ideologie – Erinnerung. Special Issue Zeitschrift der Auschwitz-Stiftung Brüssel 2009, 104, 122-36.
• Harris N, Sayner J, ed. The Text and Its Context. Studies in Modern German Literature and Society. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008.
• Sayner J. Women Without A Past? German Autobiographical Writings and Fascism. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2007.
• Sayner J. Ich lebe nicht wirklich in dieser Zeit: Negotiations of Local and National Identities in Elfriede Brüning's Jeder lebt für sich allein. German Monitor 2007, 68, 317-32.
• Sayner J. Memories of Victimhood: Nazism and the Challenge of the Autobiographical. Forum for Modern Language Studies 2007, 43, 301-15.
• Sayner J. Man muß die bunten Blüten abreißen…: Memories of Fascism in Melita Maschmann's Fazit. Forum for Modern Language Studies 2005, 41, 213-25.
• Sayner J. Constructing Identities and Remembering Fascism: The Published Letters of Elisabeth Langgässer. In: Bland,C;Cross,M, ed. Gender, the Letter and Politics. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, pp.241-52.
• Sayner J. Eine Existenz aus Erinnerung: Grete Weils Leb ich denn, wenn andere leben. In: Nagelschmidt et al, ed. Zwischen Trivialität und Postmoderne: Literatur von Frauen in den 90er Jahren. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002, pp.95-112.
• Kidd J, Sayner J. Intersections of silence and empathy in heritage practice. International Journal of Heritage Studies 2019, 25(1), 1-4.