“From brain cells to society, remembering our lived experiences in every aspect”
In our everyday lives, the significance of remembering becomes evident particularly when we forget. However, the thing that is actually astonishing is that we can effortlessly remember an infinite amount of information that ranges from who we are to what we have done that day, all that we have experienced in the past as well as things we wanted to but have not been able to live, and an overwhelming volume of data about the world, the country, the city, the neighbourhood in which we live, and about the people around us. There are studies about these remembrances at the level of the nerve cells in the brain, as well as studies about what societies forget and what they remember at the other extremity. Contrary to what we once thought, we now know that what is meant by remembering is not locating and retrieving an archive record that was committed to memory in the past as a faithful record of reality. Remembering is an act in which the past is written and rewritten over and over again at every stage from the level of the nerve cells to the level of society as a whole. These being the conditions, the real question that has to be asked is not why we forget, but how some information could still be remembered.
Sami Gülgöz completed his undergraduate degree at the Department of Psychology of Boğaziçi University, and went on to obtain his postgraduate and doctoral degrees at the University of Georgia. After lecturing at Auburn University for four years, he started teaching at Koç University in 1993. Here he became an Associate Professor in 2001 and a Professor in 2006, and subsequently served as the Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences between 2006 and 2008, and as the Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities between 2008 and 2014. He is currently a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at the same faculty. His research area covers personality traits and cognitive functions. In recent years, his work focused mainly on research about autobiographical memory. In addition to publishing scientific articles, he has realised projects with institutions of education such as the Education Reform Initiative and the The Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey. He currently continues to serve as a member of the Science Board and the Board of Directors at The Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey. He has served as a representative for Turkey and a core group member at the European Science Foundation Standing Committee for Humanities, and as a panel member and referee in the research grant programs of the European Research Council. He was awarded fellow status by the Association for Psychological Science in 2012 for his contributions to the science of psychology.
The event is free of charge.
Invitations available from the Akbank Sanat ticket office on the event day, one hour before the event begins.