AJR – Landecker Digital Memory Lab

2024: A Year in Review

By Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden The year 2024 will be unforgettable to us, as the year we launched the Landecker Digital Memory Lab. We look back at what we’ve achieved. It was at a public lecture held at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum in April that we were finally able to announce the Landecker Digital Memory Lab was coming into existence. Since then, we’ve been non-stop! My two-week residential at the museum also included co-hosting a symposium on ‘Preserving Truth in the Digital Age’ and led to us confirming the Melbourne Holocaust Museum as an official project partner. We’re looking forward to collaborating with them further. Read our ‘Spotlight’ piece on the museum to find out more about their digital work past and present. The Melbourne trip was followed in September by further fieldwork in Riga, Latvia at the Žanis Lipke Memorial where we explored their use of VR. Engagement with intergovernmental organisations, policymakers and funders was a dominant thread of our first few months, particularly with the hype about ‘AI’. In June, we hosted the workshop ‘Policy and Funding Sustainable Interventions in Digital Holocaust Memory and Education’ together with the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme. The event was attended by [...]

Addressing Our Research Recommendations: Funding Bids and Policy Guidelines

by Dr Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden Lab director Dr Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden details how we came to run a workshop together with the United Nations and the Holocaust Outreach Programme earlier this summer. The event provided a forum for world-leading Holocaust commemoration organisations, international funders, and UK Parliament to explore the impact they could have on the future of global digital Holocaust memory. Between 2022 and 2023, the Lab’s current research team – Dr Kate Marrison and me – ran a series of online co-creation workshops with our project partners. The project led to the publication of 6 recommendation reports providing guidance on digital interventions in Holocaust memory and education. The workshops were composed of more than 120 diverse stakeholders, from Holocaust organisations, the wider heritage sector, creative and technical professionals, and academics from broad range of disciplines. A recurring theme emerged: there was a lot of enthusiasm and imagination for developing digital work in the Holocaust sector, but funding bids and a lack of (inter)national policy guidelines hampered development. Representatives from Holocaust organisations expressed many frustrations including a lack of coherent digital strategy; long-term, project funding; and permanent staff with digital expertise. Problems which many felt could be tackled at [...]