The memorialisation of missing people has manifested itself in multiple ways in varying contexts. Building on the conclusions of memory and trauma studies to date, this research examines the particular experience of ‘enforced disappearance’ in the contemporary Mexican context.

Much literature on memory and memorialisation of desaparecidos has been retrospective and focussed on the politics of formalised memorials and museums, framed by the binary of remembering/forgetting. This research will focus on the informal, expressive and performative elements of memorialisation, and asks how memorialisation of disappeared people is unfolding in Mexico, how it relates to geographical space, and how it draws on or differs from the memory canon in Latin America.