Preserving History in the Digital Age - One Day Symposium

This one day symposium brings together museum professionals, academics, and educators, working in Holocaust studies and related fields across Australia, as well as digital media specialists. This is an opportunity to meet colleagues, hear experts present on digital projects and applications, and discuss opportunities, challenges, & ways forward.

Full program of speakers to be announced.


Keynote: Dr Victoria Grace Walden (University of Sussex)
How can we ensure the sustainability of Holocaust memory in the digital age?

For several decades, the holocaust museums, archives, memorial sites, and educational organisations has been preparing for the time when this past moves from a ‘living memory’ to a solely ‘mediated memory’ (James Young 2000). As we soon reached the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, this time is getting closer. Despite almost 30-years of digital development in holocaust commemoration and education, there has been no systematic exploration of the projects created to date and the experiences of those involved in producing and using them.

In my fieldwork, which commenced in 2022, professionals working at holocaust institutions have voiced their frustrations with feeling like they are ‘reinventing the wheel’ every time they approach a ‘new technology’ (knowing it has been done elsewhere but not connected to those other projects extensively enough to learn from their practice). Tech companies commissioned to produce digital works for holocaust museums and memorial sites often have a very different understanding of the possibilities of the technology to the curators and educators with whom they partner, which often leads to frustration and disappointment regarding the finished products (on both sides). Digital capacities and literacies within the sector are uneven and few organisations have a permanent team dedicated to their digital development and projects are often funded by short-term grants which leaves them abandoned after a short period, broken and buggy. There is also little support to run extensive user impact research, so as a sector, we are left wondering what really works and why bother with any of this expensive technology at all? Social media has also made denial, distortion and hate more visible to staff as part of their daily work and emotional labour.

After introducing the context so far, informed by interviews with those involved in the production of digital holocaust memory projects and the recording of walkthroughs of these works, and a series of participatory workshops, i will introduce a new venture launching at the university of Sussex this may: the digital holocaust memory innovation lab. The lab has 5-year funding for a series of activities which seek to support digital holocaust memory in a sustainable way taking a global, sector-wide and interdisciplinary approach.

Dr Victoria Grace Walden SFHEA FRSA MILM is the director of learning enhancement and senior lecturer in media at the school of media, arts and humanities, Sussex Weidenfeld institute of Jewish studies. She is the author of digital holocaust memory, education and research (2021).