Paper short abstract:

The project "Returning and Sharing Memories" has as its goal the return and the sharing of the historical memory of the colonial past between Italy and its former colonized through the use of the web and the creation of a digital visual archive.

Paper long abstract:

The paper aims to illustrate the "Returning and Sharing Memories" project.

RSM is a joint project run by the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia, the University of Napoli "l'Orientale" and the Addis Ababa University to put together and return to Ethiopia visual and written documents generated during the Italian occupation, to supplement the largely Ethiopian oral knowledge base of that difficult time.

At the moment the project is focused on the gathering of the photographic material.

For "return" of these visual sources we mean the return of copies of the original documents, which, thanks to digitalization can be copied perfectly.

Thanks to the web the project may encourage participative forms in the research process and the analysis of a period, such as the colonial one, very poorly considered in textbooks and the teaching of history (and removed from political and social consciousness) in Italy.