The Pri-MI project focuses on the treatment of uncertain human remains generated by mass violence in various contemporary sociocultural contexts (France, Guatemala, Spain, Rwanda/Uganda, Columbia). We call uncertain the remains that have suffered a fate that made their definition as human remains unclear (dispersal, transformation, non-funerary uses) and/or for which legal and moral responsibility is ambiguous. The doubt regarding the legal status and the very nature of these remains opens up a space for individuals and collectives who decide to act in order for them to be recognized as dead people and cultivate their memory. This project focuses on those actors, who are not officially in charge of these remains, neither due to a professional or democratic mandate nor family tie, but who choose to care for them. We assume that this caring implies a symbolic appropriation of the remains. The objective of Pri-MI is to document this process, which consists in humanizing and appropriating remains, in both their material and memorial dimensions. To this end, the project draws on five case studies, discussed in a comparative and multidisciplinary perspective (anthropology, history, geography). We will focus on the actors involved in this caring (who are they? what reasons lead them to get involved?), on their practices (techniques in searching for bodies or remains, identification, rituals and care given to the bodies, memorialization etc.), and on the meanings and issues involved in these practices. How can one give humanness and self-identity to remains, often from tenuous and undefined materiality? From an original perspective focusing on citizens’ initiatives, Pri-MI hopes to shed light on contemporary funerary and memorial practices and the creation of post-mortem identities.