Image credit: Dr Victoria Grace Walden

Dr Victoria Grace Walden and Dr Kate Marrison of the School of Media, Arts and Humanities will be joined by an expanded team this summer to launch a new 5-year project funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation.

Awarded 4,100,000 Euros, Dr Walden will lead the 'Landecker Digital Memory Lab: Connective Holocaust Commemoration' which is dedicated to enhancing the sustainability of digital Holocaust memory. Alongside the production of original research, the Lab’s activities will include the development of a ‘living database’, which will preserve recordings of digital projects dedicated to Holocaust memory complemented by interviews with the variety of professionals involved in their development and use at Holocaust sites (from programmers and designers to curators and educators).

The ‘living database’ aims to help Holocaust memory and education institutions across the world learn from historical digital practice by providing the first database and archive of digital works in this field. Alongside this, the Lab’s team will develop a new online journal dedicated to digital Holocaust memory with an international editorial board, a suite of free Career Professional Development (CPD) programmes for Holocaust professionals and their creative partners focused on AI and machine learning; virtual and augmented technologies; computer games; social media and other digital topics tailored for the needs of those working with the type of sensitive historical material related to this past. The team will also run a series of innovation initiatives across Europe, bringing together heritage, creative and tech professionals, and academics to design digital solutions to sector-wide challenges, and will host three international conferences. These in-person events will be co-hosted with international projects partners across the continent.

The Lab’s objectives build upon the work Dr Walden led during the Covid-19 lockdowns, hosting online events and writing public blogs on www.digitalholocaustmemory.com, the recommendations reports on which she, Dr Marrison and a number of external partners collaborated, and initial walkthroughs and interviews recorded across Europe and the US in 2022.

This project is the largest investment in academic research into digital Holocaust memory to date, and will sit across the Sussex Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies and the Sussex Digital Humanities Lab.