Editorial: Heritage and Personal Memories

representing of individual lives and memories in the context of heritage and heritagisation. Today, heritage and cultural institutions such as museums and archives are well aware of their social and political role and strive to increase ecological, cultural, and social sustainability (e.g., Gardner & Hamilton eds. 2017; Janes & Sandell 2019). Therefore, they constantly seek more democratic practices with respect to how people and communities are represented and by whom. One way of achieving these objectives is to increase the use of oral history and life writings in public history activities. Public history, especially in the Nordic context, is connected to earlier traditions such as labor history, social history, and “history from below” (e.g., Ashton & Trapeznik eds. 2019). In recent years, there has been a growing interest in personal heritage. In tourism studies, for instance, personal or mundane heritage has become a part of a tourist experience where people visit sites that have personal memory or particular family significance (Prince 2021, 20). In addition to national and transnational heritage, the interest in personal heritage and memories is seen as important and appealing. Besides tourism, this can be seen in different heritage and cultural institutions like museums. The idea for this theme issue emerged from the project “Paimio Sanatorium: Social, Historical and Cultural Perspectives” at the University of Turku. In the commentary text of this issue Anne Heimo describes the multidimensional situation of the heritagisation of the sanatorium and the possibilities to utilize personal memories in the research, but also in displays and other public activities in the place that can be described as a dark heritage site. In our themed call “Heritage and Personal Memories” we asked for articles discussing various ways of using oral history and personal memories in public history activities and participatory processes. We were interested in how applied ethnographic work and ethnological research affect these activities. Editorial Heritage and Personal Memories Tuomas Hovi, Maija Mäki, Kirsi Sonck-Rautio