Latest News:
LAUNCH: Recommendations for Digital Interventions in Holocaust Memory and Education Next Steps … Pilot Project
WE NEED YOUR HELP!
We have now completed all 12 workshop sessions related to our recommendations project. We are really grateful to the more than 100 individuals contribute to the recommendation reports, the final two of which will be published in July.
Whilst we have identified a range of potential stakeholders to whom the recommendations can be addressed, we also highlighted areas that we, as a project team, could take forward. Giving back to the sector is core to our ethos demonstrating the Sussex value: ‘Research with Impact’, especially as these reports could not have been produced without contributions from busy professionals in Holocaust and heritage organisations, the creative and tech industries, artists, and academics.
One recommendation that was repeated across most of our workshops was the call for a sharing hub where professionals could connect and learn from existing practice (to avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’). Some of the suggested features included:
- A space for sharing files such as social media strategies, controlled vocabularies, policies on dealing with hate online, user impact research, consent forms, design frameworks, wider digital strategies, digitisation policies, lessons learnt, etc., that illustrate examples of existing practice.
- A space for sharing links to projects, social media accounts, platforms, and other online resources.
- A directory of contacts so people can identify potential collaborators within the sector and beyond.
- The ability to comment on existing examples of practice and call out for support.
We are really grateful to have received a grant of £31,000 from the UK Higher Education Innovation Fund to develop both the sharing hub and a pilot series of training resources over the next few months.
We are planning to launch the sharing hub on the Digital Collective Memory platform run by iRights.Lab, Germany and funded by the EVZ Foundation. The platform is a secure site designed specifically for professionals and academics working in this area. Members must complete a profile listing their professional affiliation and are only given access to the platform after approval from human moderators. Those with a ‘general interest’ in digital memory or Holocaust studies are declined access. We will also be introducing a specific ‘terms of use’ consent survey to our sharing hub space to ensure people use resources in good faith. We are working closely with iRights.Lab on this project to think through legal and ethical requirements, so please be assured that you will not be sharing resources or comments with a general public audience but rather professionals similar to yourself only.
To make the sharing hub a useful resource, however, we need your help:
- We need some initial resources to populate the sharing hub before its launch. Do you have resources you would be willing to share? If so, please follow the steps below:
- Read and accept the conditions of this consent form
- Give your files a useful name in this format ‘TypeOfFile_Institute’ e.g., ‘SocialMediaStrategy_UniofSussex’. Please share them as pdf files
- Send the files to our Project email address listed below.
In the first instance, we are asking contributors to share their resources by 19th June at the latest to enable us to prepare them for the Sharing Hub launch in July. You will be able to upload resources to the platform yourself after the launch.
- Whether you have resources to share or not, we would also really value your feedback! If you could take a few minutes to let us know what types of resources you would find most helpful on the hub this will enable us to best inform our calls for contributions. Here are some guiding questions:
- What types of resources does your institution have that you could share?
- What types of resources would you find useful?
- What’s missing from the suggested features above?
- What you be willing to be a trusted tester of the alpha version of our site?
If you are able to send answers to these questions to us by 19th June, we would be really grateful.
Please reply to our new project email address (from which this message was sent): DigitalHolocaustMemory@sussex.ac.uk with your resources and/or answers to our feedback questions and our wonderful project coordinator Denice Penrose will collate responses.
We would be really grateful of anything you are willing to share at this stage as without resources, the sharing hub will feel barren and will not achieve its aims. The sharing hub will be set up so that users can contribute resources themselves in the future, but we would like to include at least 10 resources in time for the public launch – the benefit of engaging in this process pre-launch is that we will do all the uploading for you!
For our pilot series of training resources, we will be focusing on creating stackable Career Professional Development modules supporting professionals in the Holocaust sector to develop their confidence in using social media for Holocaust memory and education. More on this will follow later!
NEWS ARCHIVE
LAUNCH: Recommendations for Digital Interventions in Holocaust Memory and Education
We are pleased to announce that the first four of our recommendations reports, developed with more than 80 individuals from the Holocaust sector, academic, and the creative and tech industries, have been published.
The reports offer recommendations on four urgent digital themes:
- AI and Machine Learning
- Digitising Material Evidence
- Social Media
- Recording, Recirculating and Remixing Testimony
The recommendations can be downloaded here. We encourage anyone interested in helping to action these recommendations to get in touch.
Free e-book available: The Memorial Museum in the Digital Age.
The Memorial Museum in the Digital Age is the first comprehensive review of thinking and practice related to the effects and affects of the digital for memorial museums. These commemorative and educational spaces have traditionally contained object-heavy displays to stand-in for people, cultures and things that have been destroyed. What then happens when collected material evidence is presented to visitors/ users in digitalised forms – distanced from the material proximity offered at so-called ‘authentic sites’? Whilst memorial museums have often been celebrated for their commemorative and educative agendas, they are also political and tend to reiterate museological logics deeply embedded in problematic histories of arranging cultural objects and identities. Can digital technologies offer the potential to rearrange or resituate the memorial museum into activist spaces? Can going online disrupt the national memory politics that commonly characterise memorial museums, or does it enable more of the same? These are some of the questions that interest the contributors of this collection.
Whilst there is a growing number of publications interested in museums and the digital, the specificity of the memorial museum is understudied. Yet, it raises particular concerns relating to preservation, materiality, ethics, and absence that require careful consideration in relation to the digital. After a theoretical consideration of what the memorial museum is and could be in this ‘digital age’, this book offers a series of case studies written by curators, artists, and academics covering memorial museum examples in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Registration is now live for the remaining online event of our spring season:
The Holocaust and Social Media – Monday 17th May 1.30-3pm (London Time, UTC+1)
We welcome you to come and mark Holocaust Memorial Day with the Digital Holocaust Memory project at these forthcoming events:
1. A talk about online commemoration events in 2020, hosted by CCMR, Lille on Tues 19th Jan. Register
2. I will be participating in a roundtable discussion about the ethics of using digital media for Holocaust memory as part of a programme organised by Falstad Memorial, Norway and POLIN Museum, Poland on Thurs 4th Feb. Register
3. We will be hosting a fantastic line-up of speakers as part of the University of Sussex’s Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations for a roundtable dedicated to ‘the Future of Holocaust Memory’ on Fri 5th Feb. Register
4. I will also be contributing to the University of Oxford’s Holocaust Memorial Day project, discussing what the Digital Holocaust Memory project is, and what it hopes to achieve on Mon 15th Feb. Register
Public pieces soon coming on Latest TV (Freeview Ch7 on 27th January) and via the Queen Mary, University of London alumni blog.
Announcing our next online discussion: In association with the University of Sussex, and the Sussex Weidenfeld Institute for Jewish Studies, for Holocaust Memory Day 2021:
The Future of Holocaust Memory
Friday February 5th 1-3.30pm (UTC 0)
With speakers from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, the Imperial War Museums, and the Hebrew University.
As always the event is free, but registration is required. More details are available
Online discussion: Playing the Holocaust I
Friday November 20th 4-5.30pm (UTC 0)
The first in a two-part series of web events focusing on the relationship between games, play and Holocaust memory. The idea of computer games tackling the Holocaust has been controversial. In this academic roundtable, we invite scholars working in Denmark, the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands to offer a position on this topic. Join us for what we hope will be an animated debate – we want to hear your views.
As always the event is free, but registration is required. More details are available here.
It will be recorded and published on the blog on this website within a week after the event.
Next Online Discussion – Digital Holocaust Archives
Thursday October 1st, 3-5pm (BST, UTC+1) with speakers from NIOD/EHRI, The University of Cambridge, Arolsen Archives, Wiener Library, and Terraforming.
For more information and to book your place, check out the details here. Archive and heritage professionals, researchers, senior, college and university students, and any other interested parties welcome.
Online Discussion – Holocaust Commemorations: Between the Digital and the Historial Site
Thursday September 17th, 10.30am-noon (BST, UTC +1) with speakers from Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen memorials.
For more information and to book your place, check out the details here. Heritage professionals, researchers, senior, college and university students, and any other interested parties welcome.
Digital Holocaust Memory – Online Discussion with …
Dr. Carmelle Stephens, Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls, Dr. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Dr. Tomasz Łysak, Dr. Victoria Grace Walden and Imogen Dalziel
Wednesday 15th July 13:30-15:00 British Summer Time
Digital technologies are increasingly used to remember, research and teach about the Holocaust. In this online discussion, an international and interdisciplinary panel of academics working with and on digital media in different ways will introduce the significance of technology to their research and together will explore some of the key debates about using digital Holocaust memory.
- What do we mean by digital Holocaust memory? What does this term encapsulate? Is it too vague?
- To what extent are digital technologies being used simply to remediate other media forms and logics, historically used for Holocaust memory?
- What are the limitations or challenges of specific digital platforms, tools and technologies?
- Should we be concerned about introducing digital technology into Holocaust memory?
- To what extent can digital technologies transform how we do Holocaust memory, research and education?
Find Out More and Register for the Event HERE
Monday 18th May 2020 – 14:00-15:30 (BST)
Join us for an online roundtable discussion reflecting upon Holocaust memory and education practices during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Speakers include:
- Stephen D. Smith (Finci-Viterbi Endowed Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation, California)
- Heather Blumenthal (Director of the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre)
- Anna Hirsh (Senior Archivist, Jewish Holocaust Centre, Melbourne)
- Louise Stafford (Director of Learning, National Holocaust Centre and Museum, UK)
2020 was the year in which many 75th anniversaries related to the Holocaust and the end of World War II were to be marked with commemorative events and education programmes. However, many of these were cancelled, happened with staff-only behind closed doors, or moved online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
As many countries around the world begin to consider plans to emerge from lockdown in the coming months, we are certainly looking towards a ‘new normal’. Whilst social distancing and other measures that will remain in place for some time present restrictions, such a moment also encourages us to reflect on the opportunities regarding how we might define the future of Holocaust education, memory and heritage practice, particularly in terms of the integration of digital technologies. In this roundtable event, our panel will consider what might this new normal look like for organisations dedicated to Holocaust memory and education, and what have we learnt from experiences working during these unprecedented times?
We hope this will be the first in a series of online events related to digital Holocaust memory. For news of further events follow @Holocaust_digi on Twitter, or @DHMemoryProject on Facebook