On Thursday, 15 October, we welcome Madelijn Strick for a lecture on humor and commemoration (please note: the lecture will be held in Dutch). Strick is a social psychologist at Utrecht University and conducts research into the science of humor. She is the academic expert on humor regarding complex and sensitive topics.
Can a joke ever be in place at a site of commemoration? With twenty years of research on humor under her belt, yet sharing the very same discomfort as anyone else, Madelijn Strick explores the function of humor in the most extreme circumstances known to humanity. Drawing on testimonies from concentration camp survivors, contemporary mourning rituals, and how we ourselves react to memorial sites decades later, this lecture examines the moral boundaries of humor during commemoration, and questions what a laugh in such places actually means.
Tickets
About Madelijn Strick
Dr. Madelijn Strick is a social psychologist at Utrecht University. She earned her PhD with a dissertation on humor in advertising and has since specialized in humor research. In 2020, she published her book ‘Humor is een van de vier pijlers onder het universum (de andere drie ben ik vergeten)’. She leads research on the role of humor in making moral issues negotiable, such as inappropriate behavior within organizations. In this lecture, she addresses for the first time one of the gravest possible applications of that research: the place of humor in Holocaust commemoration.