While researching this project Sara did not find one such program in any teaching curriculum anywhere else in the world. Countries seem to only teach life skills which focus on job related activities. A Foundation for Life is a revision of her first publication Return to Innocence with the intention to cover a wider age group, and produce a simpler format which can be introduced to the age group six to eighteen year olds, once again teaching how to love and respect themselves and others, but this time through understanding the basics of perception and the role it plays in interpersonal communication.
The narrative explores the themes of life, death, and the urgency of living fully through the perspective of a young individual who grapples with the concept of mortality. As summer arrives, the protagonist confronts the idea of seizing the moment, leading to a transformative experience that challenges their previous notions about life. The story delves into the tension between existential thoughts and the desire to embrace life's fleeting beauty.
The book delves into the memory of the German Democratic Republic through the lens of cross-border collaborations among three German institutions. It employs a unique theoretical framework, integrating relational sociology, network analysis, and narrative to reveal the epistemic coloniality influencing global partnerships. Sara Jones offers a reconceptualization of transnational memory, advocating for a collaborative approach in both practices and ethics, while examining how these institutions navigate the complex dynamics between East and West, and North and South.
The Media of Testimony explores testimony relating to the Stasi in different cultural forms: autobiographical writing, memorial museums and documentary film. Combining theoretical models from diverse disciplines, it presents a new approach to the study of testimony, memory and mediation.
This study develops an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of the cultural history of the German Democratic Republic, examining the interaction between intellectuals and Party functionaries from a literary and historical perspective. Divided into three case studies, the work focuses on writers positioned along a spectrum of conformity and dissent and who had quite different relationships to political power: Hermann Kant, Stefan Heym and Elfriede Brüning. Drawing on and comparing unpublished archive material, autobiography and the literary output of the three named writers, this study brings to the fore the ambiguities and contradictions of intellectual life in the GDR. Tensions between the different sources point towards tensions inherent in the subject positions of writers, publishers, reviewers and cultural authorities. This granular approach to the study of GDR cultural history challenges top-down interpretations and builds into a theoretical understanding of GDR cultural life based on the concepts of ambiguity and ambivalence and the increasing fragmentation of ideology. Comparison with other spheres of GDR life points towards the significance of these concepts for the study of East German society as a whole.
