ABOUT ME

Hi everyone! My name is Sofia and this is my introduction to you as the 2023 Circumnavigator Fellow from Georgetown

Tomorrow I leave Houston, with my family, friends, and beloved cat Maurice saying their final goodbye’s when I embark on a three month long adventure to circumnavigate the globe. As I spend my final moments at home before the journey begins, I’m embracing the stillness and tranquility of comfort – presumably, this state of being comfortable will not be a frequent feeling while I live off of three pairs of pants and a backpack…but as I imagine the whirlwind of what is to come, I feel ready for the challenge of relying on the peace within myself.

My trip begins by going south. I’m flying more than 4,500 miles (but crossing no time zones) from Texas to Santiago, Chile, where I will stay for a couple of weeks before moving on to Argentina, Germany, Latvia, Vietnam, and finally Japan. In each of these countries I will be investigating something very important to me – memory.

I’ve always been a person who thinks frequently (maybe too frequently) about the past. It feels important to ask yourself, “what happened before me? what universal forces of history, society, and politics brought us to where we are today?” As a Culture and Politics major at Georgetown I initially studied these questions in the context of the nation – how do different narratives, stories, and myths create our conceptions of our national identity, and ultimately who we perceive ourselves to be? But last spring I took a class about contested memory in Eastern Europe and my mind almost exploded when I learned about one key concept that it felt like I was missing – collective memory.

French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs wrote that human memory exists in a social context, where different groups of people form different memories and narratives about the past, based on how their group interprets the past and their social identities. I was utterly floored when I learned that this knowledge exists because my own heritage and identity entails such different collective memories (ethnically half-Russian half-Ukrainian, raised in a Russian household, in the US since 4 years old).

So, in this journey around the world I am investigating memory and the existence of contested memories in a society – every nation has disagreements about the past, especially when it has gone through ruptures in the social fabric like dictatorship, war, genocide, or colonialism. In each of the countries that I’m visiting (Chile, Argentina, Germany, Latvia, Vietnam, and Japan), I’ll be looking at a different instance of contested memory in a post-conflict setting and investigating how civil society (normal people like you or I!!!) have become memory activists to put forth different versions of collective memory about the past.

Finally, as I sit in wonder thinking about the immensity and excitement of this upcoming trip, I’d like to thank the Circumnavigators for their support and generosity…it almost feels like I’m fulfilling my childhood dream of an Indiana Jones-type quest. In a mere 16 hours I fly to Chile, and the future awaits!