LHI activities in 2024
Research on contemporary history of Luxembourg investigates the political, economic, cultural and social histories of Luxembourg in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Its research profile reflects the mission entrusted to the University of Luxembourg: producing new knowledge about the contemporary history of Luxembourg by studying phenomena and processes that have profoundly affected the country and whose transnational and comparative value exceeds the national perspective.
At the core of current research projects are the history of the Second World War, colonial history, social history and cultural history. Currently composed of 31 researchers, mostly PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers, the LHI research group gathers regularly by means of team meetings, an annual retreat, and a research seminar. Researchers of LHI are also actively involved in the struggle for better research conditions – especially through their engagement in favour of a revision of the Luxembourgish archival law from 2018.
A key objective of enhancing synergy within the research area involves collaborative efforts to advance digital methodologies for analysing various sources pertinent to Luxembourg’s contemporary history: the automatic extraction of information from serial administrative sources (e.g. registration cards of Dudelange inhabitants), the development of a standard for digital search through existing oral testimonies, and a digital transcription of handwritten documents in Luxembourg.
Nicolas Arendt is an FNR AFR holder analysing the engagement of the ARBED company in former Eastern Europe. Ira Yeroshko studies the use of visual media, such as film, animation and graphic novel, for creating narratives about the ongoing Russia-Ukrainian war. And Emilia Sánchez González combines interdisciplinary approaches to create a deep-mapping visualization of the complex history of the “Family of Man” exhibition’s itinerancy.
Research commissioned by Luxembourgish public and private stakeholders
In 2024, the LHI research group continued to carry out research on the request of Luxembourgish public and private stakeholders. The societal interest in the history of the Second World War is reflected in a significant number of projects: provenance research of Jewish property commissioned by the Luxembourgish state based on article 5 of its agreement with the Israeli Consistory in Luxembourg (under the supervision of Andreas Fickers). In 2024, the Mémorial digital de la Shoah was further expanded. At the end of the year, over 150 family biographies were available online. Existing biographies have been revised and supplemented with additional documents and photographic material.
And Christoph Brüll and his team finalised virtual exhibition of the Second World War in Luxembourg.
Research funded by science funds
The Family of Man (c) Romain Girtgen
LHI members are successful in attracting competitive funding provided by science funds. Machteld Venken leads a work package on the history of welfare within the Greater Region as part of the European Research Council Advanced Grant ‘Social politics in European Borderlands. A Comparative and Transnational Study, 1870s-1990s’ coordinated at the European University Institute of Florence. She received an FNR INTER grant from the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) and the Polish Science Center for the trilateral project ‘Researching the Collecting, Preserving, Analysing and Disclosing of Ukrainian Testimonies of the War’ conducted in cooperation with the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Center of Urban History in Lviv (https://u-core.org/en/). The FNR CORE research and transmedia project ‘Tracing the Legacy of Edward Steichen and the “Family of Man” Exhibition’ is led by Andreas Fickers.
Four PhD candidates conduct research funded by the FNR. As part of the DFG-FNR funded Research Unit on the history of popular culture in the long 1960s, Véronique Faber unravels the past of the Luxembourg Funfair Schueberfouer, among others through interviewing and participant observation.
Through conducting research on the colonial and post-colonial history of Luxembourg and the role of actors in the colonisation of Africa, the LHI axis contributes to an ongoing debate in Luxembourgish society (https://orbilu.uni.lu/handle/10993/61562). Social history was conducted by Estelle Berthereau (social inequality) Sam Klein (labour history) and Claudia de Martino (history of childhood) (https://www.oejqs.lu/en/project/childlux-3/).
Events and output
Flagship publications are a monograph about the history of the Luxembourg Chamber of Employees, the collective volume ‘War Experiences in Europe’, a peer-reviewed special issue on border temporalities and a peer reviewed special issue about Luxembourg and the Holocaust. In 2024, the virtual exhibition of the Second World War in Luxembourg and a website presenting the history of the National Miners’ Monument and a registry of mining victims were launched. A series of newspaper articles on the spoliation of Jewish property was published in the Tageblatt, and a Podcast on the decline in Luxembourg’s Steel Industry was aired ().
Among the events organised by LHI members were the inauguration of the digital exhibition of the Second World War, and the study day ‘Bridging Past and Present Borders. For a renewed dialogue between History of Borderlands and Border Studies’. We visited the ArcelorMittal Belval production plant as well as the new permanent exhibition of the Musée national de la résistance et des droits humains, guided by Joé Voncken.
In 2024, six PhD candidates of LHI successfully defended their theses: Blandine Landau, Johanna Jaschik, Daniel Richter, Irene Portas, Suzana Cascao and Arnaud Sauer.
LHI hosted three Transnational Scholars in Residence: theater maker Corina Ostafi from UL, welfare historian Dominika Gruziel from EUI, and borderland historian Maxime Kaci from the University of Franche-Comté.