Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine
Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance
Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust
Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine
Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History
Luxembourg Centre for European Law
Luxembourg Centre for Socio-Environmental Systems
Hands-on History lecture with Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, Director of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab at the University of Sussex.
How can we capture collective digital Holocaust memory in order to study it? Collective memory is already an elusive object of study, only further complicated by adding ‘digital’ to the mix. Whilst professional ventures in Holocaust remembrance have become increasingly digital over the past 30 years, there has still not been any extensive, systematic study of this as a field of practice. Why? Because projects come and go, often faster than researchers can get access to the funds needed to study them, and they have historically been dispersed across the globe – often accessible only at physical memorial and museum sites. With the lost projects is also an immense loss of experience and knowledge.
The Digital Memory Database is an attempt to create not only the first database of digital Holocaust memory projects, but also to create a complementary archive including walkthroughs of projects and interviews with those involved in their creation and dissemination. It recognises the entanglement between human and computational actancies in memory-making, and hopes, beyond other questions to help answer: Who and what are today’s (and potentially tomorrow’s) memory-makers? And how are they inter-related?
In this hands-on lecture, Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden will present the theoretical ideas behind the database, whilst presenting it as a work-in-progress. As we are currently in beta V2.0 testing phase, we would welcome any feedback – particularly in relation to how we might expand possibilities for digital humanities research.
About the speaker
Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden is Professor of Digital Heritage, Memory and Culture and Director of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab at the University of Sussex (UK). Her work focuses on digital Holocaust and genocide memory, interrogating the intersections between critical digital media studies, memory studies, and philosophical archaeologies. She is author of Cinematic Intermedialities and Contemporary Holocaust Memory (Palgrave 2019), and editor of Digital Holocaust Memory, Education and Research (Palgrave 2021) and The Memorial Museum in the Digital Age (REFRAME 2022). Her current projects include the Landecker Digital Memory Lab, ‘If These Streets Could Talk’ – an AR project about the Budapest Ghetto, and ‘#NeverAgain V #NeverHappened’ led by colleagues at DIGSUM, Umea University, Sweden. She has developed policy and working papers for the United Nations and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and has advised on many digital Holocaust remembrance projects. She was the founder of the Memory Studies Association’s Museums and Memory Working Group. Current she is Co-Chair of the UK’s Media Education Association, and President Elect of the British and Irish Association of Holocaust Studies.