Professor Ann Rigney of Utrecht University has been awarded an honorary doctorate by Aarhus University for her outstanding research in cultural recollection. Drawing on literary studies, Ann Rigney has contributed to an interdisciplinary effort within the study of societal recollection, and she has developed concepts and new models that have had a major impact. In 2016, she founded the Memory Studies Association, which attests to her central position within the field of cultural memory studies.
Rigney’s eminent career inthe field of cultural memory studies began with her doctoral thesis, The Rhetoric of Historical Representation: Three Narrative Histories of the French Revolution, and the monograph “The Afterlives of Walter Scott: Memory on the Move”. She has subsequently written and edited a large number of articles, monographs and anthologies within the field. Her thorough research has resulted in award-winning and highly valued contributions to her field.
Rigney has visited Aarhus University previously. Recently, she delivered an outstanding contribution to the Aarhus-edited anthology Literature: An Introduction to Theory and Analysis, a chapter entitled “Memory”. The conferral of an honorary doctorate on Ann Rigney by Aarhus University represents an invaluable contribution to the international scope of the Faculty of Arts, which hereby gains unique insight into cultural memory studies research by one of Europe’s most prominent scholars.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Education:
1981-1987: PhD in Comparative Literature, University of Toronto, Canada
1979-1981: Master’s degree in Modern English and American Literature, University College, Dublin, Ireland
Positions in recent years:
2003–: Professor of Comparative Literature, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
2000–2002: Professor of Comparative Literature, VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands
1997–2000: Associate Professor of Literary Theory, Department of Comparative Literature, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Selected prizes and honorary awards:
2015–2017: Marie Skłodowska Fellowship
2014: Member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities
2012-2015: Awarded EUR 59,000 grant for NITMES (network in transnational memory studies)