Directed by Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, the Lab’s research has demonstrated that organisations commemorating the Holocaust are full of ‘digital imagination’, but the sector faces a ‘sustainability crisis’ due to:
- a lack of basic technological infrastructure to support engagement with digital technologies
- increasing Holocaust denial, distortion and trivialisation online, perpetuated by AI
- a lack of training programmes to improve understanding of the digital aspects of Holocaust memory, education and how to confront disinformation
To address these urgent problems over the next 5 years, the Lab will cultivate new knowledge with novel research on topics including the impact of social media, computer games, VR and AR, AI and other digital media on Holocaust memory.
The Lab will also:
- create a ‘living database-archive’ of worldwide digital projects including hundreds of hours of interviews and walkthroughs
- lead a programme of co-design events held across Europe, Latin America and Australia bringing together Holocaust memory and education professionals, academics, technology and creative media industries, and policymakers
- offer online and in-person opportunities for dialogue among these stakeholders to focus on affecting real change
- engage with funders and policymakers to encourage better support worldwide
- develop a range of training courses designed to enhance critical awareness of digital technologies for Holocaust memorial organisations
- host three large-scale international events to showcase and learn lessons from initiatives in this field
- host a free advisory and consultancy service
Professor Richardson-Walden said: “Holocaust memory and education organisations are full of brilliant people, but they are faced with multiple challenges that threaten the visibility and impact of their work. The Lab seeks to address these issues by providing a hub that aims to tackle them at the transnational level through interdisciplinary and cross-sector working. Holocaust memory and education are facing an existential crisis; it has never been more urgent to do this work.”
Lena Altman, Co-CEO of the Alfred
Landecker Foundation said: “The memory of the Holocaust is under attack: We are
witnessing a troubling global rise in historical revisionism and Holocaust
distortion, accelerated by the ongoing digital transformation. How do we
encourage a digital generation to engage with the murder of millions of Jews
and apply lessons from this past to contemporary challenges? The Landecker
Digital Memory Lab addresses this head-on by mapping existing high-quality
digital content on the Holocaust in a unique archive, so that those engaged in
historical and political education do not have to reinvent the wheel, but can
learn from best practice examples instead.
“Also, the Lab seeks to foster interdisciplinary and international collaboration among researchers, developers and educators, thus contributing to breaking up silos, all in order to make the Holocaust matter today to the widest possible audience.”
The Lab was launched at the Imperial War Museum in London last night, where Professor Richardson-Walden introduced the initiative to an audience that included Holocaust survivors and their descendants; representatives from Holocaust memory and education organisations; academics; and creative digital media professionals.
Speaking at the event were: Lord Khan, Minister for Faith, Communities and Resettlement; Lord Eric Pickles, President of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and The UK Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues; Professor Michael Luck, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Cornel Sandvoss, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Media and Humanities, both University of Sussex; and Lena Altman, Co-CEO of the Alfred Landecker Foundation.
About the Landercker Digital Memory Lab
The Landecker Digital Memory Lab, funded by and, in partnership with the Alfred Landecker Foundation, sits across the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies and Sussex Digital Humanities Lab in the University of Sussex’s Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities.
The Alfred Landecker Foundation awarded the University of Sussex 4.1 million Euros for the Lab: the largest grant for humanities research in the history of the University. Find out more about the Lab’s work here.