What role do commemorations play in the construction of collective memory in places afflicted by extreme war violence? How do such commemorations create or hinder durable peace? And to what extent can the inclusion of non-official, grassroots commemorations and bottom-up initiatives more broadly, stimulate more inclusive forms of remembrance? These questions will be explored through a research project that focuses on the crucial case of the former Yugoslavia. The project zooms in on the sites of extreme war atrocity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia: Srebrenica, Prijedor, Vukovar, Knin, Glina, Jasenovac, and Batajnica. At these critical post-war sites nationalist elites regularly evoke competitive victimhood to inflame the “enemy” images, mixing the memories of WWII, the socialist period, and the atrocities of the 1990s. These nationalist mobilizations form an obstacle to inclusive citizenship and durable peace. The overall aim is to create a map of alternative/ oppositional commemorations existing in these contexts, and explore their possibilities to form a viable, more inclusive alternative to the formal institutionalized (state) commemorations. Grassroots commemorations will be examined as social movement activities (studying their mobilizational capacity and significance) that seek recognition and justice for victims of the “enemy” side. The project’s unique micro-level participatory approach unravels the tangible as well as virtual efforts at seeking active forms of memory, involving regular citizens in their relationship to the war past, interacting with polarizing political forces. Through a specific lens – of artistic activism – the project also examines visual and virtual interactive approaches to memory, where activists redefine the spaces where war atrocities took place in innovative and striking ways, reclaiming them as inclusive places of memory. The project relies on conceptual frames and methods from sociological and political research, on the one hand, and humanities (cultural studies/ media studies, memory studies, engaged art) on the other.