"Knowledge and Memory Policies: Public (Mis)Use of the Recent Bulgarian Past" is three year research project. Its basic premiss is the lack of critical and profound mass of knowledge about the communist period which hinders the independent evaluation of the past.

The project aim is to involve people from the countryside (village, small town, medium-sized town), ordinary people in reflecting on their past (life under communism 1944-1989) and put their own stories in the public debate, looking for reasons of silence, non-participation, alienation and melancholy.

The voices from below are voices of people from the periphery of the system, performers of prescribed roles who were trampled or privileged by the system, people who have failed to conceptualise their life experience and are therefore still helpless in the changing times.

The institute for studies of the recent past started a common research project with Open Society Institute in Sofia on the communist years in Bulgaria. Researchers are writing on 16 actual topics from the recent past. Outcomes to be announced and published in 2007.