Memory, Orality and the Archive: Crafting history from below
John Chircop
In this monograph, John Chircop explores the intricate intersection between collective memory – conveyed through – orality, and the archive. Taking a radically critical view of the traditional archive as a social construct, having been deeply implanted in the prevalent power structures, shaping and legitimizing the elites’ version of the past, this work elaborates, both theoretically and methodologically, strategies which one seeking to reconstruct a more authentic and inclusive history from below needs to employ. Across all chapters, Orality – in its wealth of expressions, from storytelling to folk-singing – is presented as a vital instrument, preserving and conveying a depth of cultural and social collective memory. Oral traditions and oral histories are here valued as indispensable for a reconceptualization of our past – as well as for a profound rethinking of our present ‘human condition’ – which prioritizes shared memories of the labouring poor, women and other subaltern groups, whose histories have been marginalised, their lives made invisible and their voices repressed. Building on this thesis, a key chapter provides a critical analysis of the state and the ruling classes’ appropriation of local folk-singing, expediently misrepresenting it as a ‘classless national tradition’. Instead, this work offers a reinterpretation of ghana, grounded in its proper historical social terrain and the cultural realm of the subaltern – rendering it a profound repository of their collective memory, philosophy of life, and conception of the past. The remaining chapters in this volume discuss how to bring to the surface and explore the depth of this subjugated knowledge and related histories of the “common people”. It is argued that the use of oral history, on-site ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative research in multiple ‘ordinary records’, ephemera, and material objects – accompanied by a ‘contrapuntal reading’ of archival records – are essential not only to craft a ‘history from below’, but also to reclaim the collectively cherished notion of the ‘past’ as a common good.
Research at the Mediterranean Institute spans the humanities, social sciences, health, environment and cultural heritage. The selection below brings together recent and representative publications by members of the Institute’s research community across its four interconnected research areas. The categories are intentionally porous: much of the Institute’s work moves across disciplinary and thematic boundaries.
Research in this area examines political and social transformation across the Mediterranean, including migration and borders, democracy and governance, colonial legacies, citizenship and the movement of people and ideas.
DeBono, Daniela. 2020. “The Libya–Italy Migration Corridor.” In Tanja Bastia and Ronald Skeldon (eds), Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development, pp. 462–467. Routledge.
Mainwaring, Cetta and Daniela DeBono. 2021. “Criminalizing Solidarity: Search and Rescue in a Neo-Colonial Sea.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 39(5): 1030–1048.
Khakee, Anna and Sarah Wolff (eds). 2025. Transversal Democracy Projection in the Mediterranean: A De-centred Practice Analysis. Routledge.
Khakee, Anna. 2019. European Democracy Promotion in the Southern Mediterranean. IEMed Aula Mediterrània Series.
Fenech, Giuliana, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Farriba Schulz. 2026. “Storied Citizenship in the Postdigital Times: The Seen and Heard Project as a Case Study in Children’s Social Movement Praxis.” In T. Rogers, E. L. Nelson, H. Rajagopal and A. Moore (eds), Storied Citizenship: Reimagining Civic Encounters among Children and Youth in the Post-Digital Age. Routledge.
This area approaches the Mediterranean through embodiment, health, foodways, medicine, care and the environmental systems that sustain human and non-human life.
Chircop, John and Francisco Javier Martínez (eds). 2018. Mediterranean Quarantines, 1750–1914: Space, Identity and Power. Manchester University Press.
Chircop, John. 2018. “Quarantine Sanitization, Colonialism and the Construction of the ‘Contagious Arab’ in the Mediterranean, 1830s–1900.” In F. Javier Martínez and John Chircop (eds), Mediterranean Quarantines, 1750–1914: Space, Identity and Power, pp. 199–231. Manchester University Press.
Buttigieg, Noel. 2024. “Oleotourism in Mediterranean Islands: Malta as a Case-Study.” Mediterranean Tourism Knowledge Exchange and Policy Forum, pp. 172–174.
Cassar, Carmel and Anthony Calleja. 2007. Eating through Time: The Culture of Food in the Mediterranean. Mediterranean Cultural Encounters.
Cassar, Carmel. 1998. “Nutrition in a Central Mediterranean Island Community: Malta in Medieval and Early Modern Times.” Rivista di Antropologia 76: 153–162.
Orsini, Gisella. 2017. “‘Hunger Hurts, but Starving Works’: The Moral Conversion to Eating Disorders.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 41(1): 111–141.
Murphy, Brenda and Clarissa Sammut Scerri. 2025. “Activism and Anger: Online Communities and Digital Resistance to Domestic Violence and Femicide.” Gender and Justice, pp. 1–25.
Borg, Joseph A., David Dandria, Julian Evans, Leyla Knittweis and Patrick J. Schembri. 2023. “A Critical Checklist of the Marine Fishes of Malta and Surrounding Waters.” Diversity 15(2): 225.
Hili, Andrew and Joseph A. Borg. 2024. “Influence of Effluent Discharge on Maltese Shore Biotic Assemblages.” Rapport du Congrès de la Commission Internationale pour l’Exploration Scientifique de la Mer Méditerranée 43: 52.
Research in this area explores the ways identities are formed and contested through religion, law, language, disability, heritage, social practice and cultural exchange across the Mediterranean.
Alberti, Gianmarco, Reuben Grima, Nicholas C. Vella, Kurt Xerri and David E. Zammit. 2024. “A Historical Landscape under Threat: Contestation and Preservation of Malta’s Pastoral Droveways.” Heritage 7: 3095–3119.
Hirsch, Susan F., Ibtisam Sadegh and David E. Zammit. 2018. “Editors’ Introduction: Religious Marriages in the Mediterranean.” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 27(2): 101–110.
Sadegh, Ibtisam and David E. Zammit. 2018. “Legitimizing a Muslim Marriage in Malta: Navigating Legal and Normative Structures.” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 7(3): 498–518.
Callus, Anne-Marie. 2020. “The Contribution of Disability Studies to the New Humanities.” Word and Text 10(1): 70–90.
Callus, Anne-Marie and Sue Vella. 2021. “The Independent Living Movement and Capitalism: Challenges and Contributions.” Studies in Social Wellbeing 1(1): 12–25.
Caruana, Sandro and Adrian Grima. 2012. “Language, Literature and the Maltese National Imaginary.” In I. Putzu and G. Mazzon (eds), Lingue, letterature, nazioni. Centri e periferie tra Europa e Mediterraneo, pp. 436–458. Franco Angeli.
Cassar, Carmel. 2024. Mediterranean Jews, Crypto-Jews and the Inquisition in Early Modern Malta. Malta University Press.
This area considers Mediterranean spaces and their representation through literature, visual culture, oral and written narrative, memory, heritage and postcolonial cultural practice.
Bugeja, Norbert (ed.). 2017. Mediterranean Fractures. Special issue of Journal of Mediterranean Studies 26(1): 1–118.
Bugeja, Norbert. 2015. “Postcolonial Springs? 2011 and the Articulation of Post-Despotic Culture in the Southeastern Mediterranean.” CounterText 1(1): 1–19.
Bugeja, Norbert. 2023. “The Aesthetic of an Orphaned Memory: Journeying Across the ‘Lit-Up Stage’ of Hisham Matar’s Siena.” Life Writing, pp. 1–14.
Grima, Adrian. 1999. “A Village for an Island: Malta in Frans Sammut’s Novel Samuraj.” Humanitas: Journal of the Faculty of Arts 1: 65–78.
Vassallo, Clare. 2005. “Memory as Protagonist in Thomas Pynchon, Anthony Burgess and Nicholas Monsarrat.” In Clare Vassallo and Ivan Callus (eds), Malta at War in Cultural Memory: Representations of ‘The Madonna’s Chosen People’, pp. 257–276. Malta University Publishers.
Borg Barthet, Stella. 1999. “Myth and History in Commonwealth Literature.” Humanitas 1.
Monteforte, Virginia. 2009. “Come un’isola ricorda: riflessioni dal fieldwork.” Journal of Maltese History 1(2): 88–99.
Bianco, Lino. 2023. “Freedom Monument, Malta: Conceptual Design Sketches and Ultimate Realisation.” Transilvania 10: 60–76.
The Mediterranean Institute supports postgraduate research across a wide range of Mediterranean themes. The following completed and current theses and dissertations reflect the breadth of this work across culture, heritage, identity, memory, politics, society and everyday life.
Busuttil, David. 2016. Towards a Cultural Cartography of the Mediterranean: Developing an Analytical Tool for Policy Makers. M.Phil. dissertation, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Azzopardi, Consiglia. 2013. Maltese Lace of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Its History, Technology and Economic Appreciation (Aspects). Ph.D. thesis, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Muscat Azzopardi, Marian. 2015. Autonomy and Meaningfulness in Old Age: Ethical Perspectives Arising from Mediterranean Portrayals of Ageing. Ph.D. thesis, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Camilleri, Patricia. 2019. Community and Heritage in a Post-Museum Context: Conceptualising Sense of Place, Space and Identities in Bormla, Malta. Ph.D. thesis, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Griffiths, Tamara J. 2020. Contemporary Mediterranean Foragers in the Apennine Mountain Area, Central Italy. Ph.D. thesis, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Vella, John. 2020. Grassroots Museums: How Curators of Micro Museums Interpret and Present Their Community: Mediterranean Historical Imaginary. Ph.D. thesis, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Cardona, Elena. Ph.D. in progress. Lost World Dialectics: Encounters of Memory and Representation in Eastern Mediterranean Life Writing. Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Szymanska, Vanessa. 2019. The Youth and the Twins: A Critical Reading of Puberty Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece (Eighth-Century BC to Fourth-Century BC). Master's dissertation in Mediterranean Studies, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Scicluna, Luke. 2022. ‘Malta l-Ewwel u Qabel Kollox’ and Dom Mintoff’s Political Discourse: Interpellative Rhetoric in a Mediterranean Setting. Master's dissertation, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Attard, George Mario. 2023. Maltese ‘Għana’: Folksinging, Representation and Performance. Master's dissertation, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.
Galea, Kluivert. 2025. The Maltese Labour Movement within an Anti-Colonial Mediterranean Context, 1945–1980s. Master's dissertation, Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta.