Lives in Fragments: Self-Narrative Sources and Biographical Approaches to the Armenian Genocide

The lens of life stories allows us to identify contested memories and counter-narratives, thus offering new ways of interpreting the social dynamics that led to acts of genocidal violence and their remembrance, yet also to their denial. Lives in Fragments focuses on life stories that were fragmented and shattered through the historical violence of the Armenian genocide, and offers a nuanced understanding of genocide’s complex historical and social dimensions. Diverse ego-documents and self-narrative sources become subject of analysis in chapters that investigate the historiography and remembrance of the Armenian genocide. By drawing attention to biographical trajectories and manifestations, Lives in Fragments reflects on the history and memory of genocidal violence.

Eren Yildirum Yetkin is based at the Catholic University of Applied Social Sciences, Berlin, and is an Advisory Board Member of the Research Committee 38 Biography and Society of the International Sociological Association. His publications include his doctoral thesis - Violence and Genocide in Kurdish Memory: Exploring the Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide through Life Stories (2022) - and a co-authored monograph, Jugendliche Erinnerungspraktiken: Methodenplurale Forschung zur Auseinandersetzung mit Geschichte und Gegenwart (Verlag Barbara Budric,2025).