Blog – Page 2 – Landecker Digital Memory Lab

Why We Shouldn’t Be Surprised about #AI #Auschwitz, and What We Can Do About It
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Why We Shouldn’t Be Surprised about #AI #Auschwitz, and What We Can Do About It

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Why We Shouldn’t Be Surprised about #AI #Auschwitz, and What We Can Do About It

By Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden Last week the BBC reported on spammers sharing ‘AI slop’ images of Auschwitz for profit. In this week’s blog, we respond to their article, reflecting on our years of research into Holocaust memory and AI. On Friday 29th August, the BBC published an article with the headline: ‘BBC reveals web of spammers profiting from AI Holocaust images.’ Whilst this might seem shocking, it shouldn’t be, and far from ‘spamming’, which can be considered a flippant action, the individuals involved in these profit-making schemes are using social media in conscious and sophisticated ways – as its logics intend it to be used. This should make us stop and ask: are platforms like Facebook good for Holocaust memory? On one hand, it would be easy (especially in the current political climate) to say, ‘not really’. On the other hand, if Holocaust museums and educational organisations want their authority to remain recognised widely, they need to be not only be present on these sites but enhance their visibility. As our previous research has argued (Walden 2021), professional Holocaust organisations need to adopt the strategies of apparent ‘bad actors’ if they want their messages to circulate as much as [...]

By Victoria Grace Walden|2025-09-02T13:32:24+01:002 September 2025|

Digital Holocaust Memory – Resources and Readings
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Digital Holocaust Memory – Resources and Readings

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Digital Holocaust Memory – Resources and Readings

Over the summer, the Landecker Digital Memory Lab team members are busy taking well-deserved breaks. Whilst our blog goes on hiatus, here are some suggested reads from our back catalogue which might help inspire or inform your autumn teaching, research and practice. The remit of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab is broad – we conceptualise ‘the digital’ as socio-technical and thus connective, and as an entanglement of human and computational actancies. But what does this mean in practice? Firstly, it means our research covers a range of different digital media, this includes computer games. Last year we hosted an international junior research associate, Austin Xie, from the University of Chicago who thought through the challenges of navigating Holocaust memory in computer games shared in two blogs on our site, part I and part II. We also launched recommendations for using VR, XR and computer games. We captured more on these topics in our blog archive, check out pieces on Playing Memories, Reading Call of Duty, and student ideas for Holocaust computer games. The first series of our new Digital Memory Dialogues also focuses on this topic asking to what extent can the Holocaust be made playable in computer games? This [...]

By Victoria Grace Walden|2025-08-28T13:23:52+01:0014 August 2025|

Behind the Scenes at the Lab: What’s in the Works?
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Behind the Scenes at the Lab: What’s in the Works?

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Behind the Scenes at the Lab: What’s in the Works?

By Mel Poluck Take a look at what the Lab has been working on over the last few months and what is coming up next. This spring, since our last quarterly round-up, the whole team has been mainly focused on preparing and running our first major international event and developing two new core resources: the Digital Memory Database and Digital Memory Dialogues, as well as continuing our mission to realign the field of digital Holocaust memory studies and ensure Holocaust memory is sustainable in the digital age. April In the run-up to the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the last Nazi-run concentration camps, including Bergen-Belsen, we launched a social media campaign to showcase our nine official partners’ Holocaust memory digital projects. This culminated in the launch of our Digital Holocaust Memory Map, developed as part of the broader work we’re doing to develop a global, perpetual ‘living database-archive’ of digital Holocaust memory projects which seeks to collect historical and contemporary digital Holocaust memory practice. The platform will serve to : Allow practitioners in Holocaust museums, memorial sites, libraries and educational organisations to learn from each other’s experiences and save on ‘reinventing the wheel’ each time a new digital endeavour [...]

By Mel Poluck|2025-11-10T14:59:59+00:0031 July 2025|

The Inaugural Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo 2025
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The Inaugural Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo 2025

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The Inaugural Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo 2025

By Mel Poluck We built a games arcade, an exhibitor hall, set up various exhibitions and VR suites, ran a mini project hack, showcased work-in-progress, learnt new skills through workshops, engaged in debates and discussions, networked, hosted ‘let's play’ sessions and went to the beach together. This was the inaugural Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo 2025. Why did we do it? One of the overarching aims of the Landecker Digital memory Lab is to create a community of individuals and organisations working in the field of digital memory that cuts across traditional silos, nationalities and disciplines. To this end, we are convening a series of three international events, starting with the Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo 2025, held at University of Sussex last month. After months of intense planning and preparing, on Tuesday 24 June, as delegates began streaming through the doors of the Jubilee building to the registration desk, it was heartening to see attendees arrive from so many affiliations and countries. There were representatives from more than 30 countries among Expo participants, including student ambassadors, from across the Middle East, from Latin America, North America, Europe and Asia. https://youtube.com/shorts/v4dRS_Jc5Zo Setting the tone We wanted to create an event that [...]

By Mel Poluck|2025-08-15T09:31:03+01:0022 July 2025|

Building a Living Database, Part 3: Software Development
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Building a Living Database, Part 3: Software Development

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Building a Living Database, Part 3: Software Development

In the final part of the series, we take a deep dive into the technical development of our flagship Digital Holocaust Memory Database – a ‘living’ database-archive of the world’s digital Holocaust memory projects – including the technical trade-offs that needed to be made along the way and how the team established feedback loops for constant improvement. By James Alvarez, Senior Web Developer, University of Sussex We began the process by holding a series of workshops, based on the Joint Application Design ethos. During this Discovery phase, we got everyone involved in the project round the table and started from basic principles: the aims of the project, what success looks like, and what characteristics of users we have. This ultimately feeds into a document of knowledge about who our users are and what they are trying to do – and outlines this in a very concrete way to ground planning activities. Starting from these overviews is crucial in software planning. We wanted to tailor our approach to the intended users, and without being fully aware of what users are trying to do, it's easy to lose track of what to focus the efforts on. We could then began to [...]

By Mel Poluck|2025-07-02T17:57:10+01:0019 June 2025|

Building a Living Database, Part 2: Gathering and Preparing Content
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Building a Living Database, Part 2: Gathering and Preparing Content

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Building a Living Database, Part 2: Gathering and Preparing Content

On the back of our first round of user testing of our flagship resource the Digital Memory Database, Lab Research Fellow Dr Ben Pelling gives an insight into how we approach cataloguing, indexing, preserving and presenting a wealth of digital Holocaust projects from around the world. Following the launch of our Digital Memory Map on 15 April, to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, we are now focused on the development of the Digital Memory Database. The Database will expand on the map, providing a regularly-updated resource for professionals working in Holocaust memory and education, their creative partners and academics. Details of projects and their associated organisations will be complemented, where organisations give us permission, by walkthrough recordings of the digital projects themselves and interviews with those who created, curated and manage them. It is a major resource unlike any other. It will allow Holocaust memory professionals to learn from existing practice, connect with projects across the globe and let them discover other digital Holocaust memory projects. We hope that it will amplify peripheral stories of the Holocaust and throw into sharp relief where digital Holocaust memory is at risk. Here is how [...]

By Ben|2025-08-01T09:57:07+01:0015 May 2025|

How Can We Ensure A Sustainable Future for Digital Holocaust Memory?
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How Can We Ensure A Sustainable Future for Digital Holocaust Memory?

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How Can We Ensure A Sustainable Future for Digital Holocaust Memory?

In a new working paper published by the United Nations, our Director Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden highlights key interventions needed from policymakers and funders to help shape digital Holocaust memory at a global scale. As our research has evidenced, there is a huge amount of ‘digital imagination’ in the Holocaust heritage and education sector, but this is rarely matched with the necessary infrastructure to support the creation of digital projects and their long-term maintenance. Furthermore, professionals often feel like they are reinventing the wheel, when colleagues elsewhere have already learnt the lessons, which they find themselves facing with each new digital venture. During our research, we have encountered many defunct apps, alongside old hardware that could no longer allow updates to programs, unstable data connectivity, missing content, bugs and other problems. 'Sustainability Crisis' A new working paper, published by the United Nations, describes this as a ‘sustainability crisis’. Its findings were informed by a workshop we held with policymakers, funders and transnational stakeholders in June 2024 in response to our recommendation reports. The workshop was held together with The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, in the United Nations Department of Global Communications. ‘Sustainable Digital Futures for [...]

By Mel Poluck|2025-04-30T10:03:07+01:0028 April 2025|

Building a Living Database, Part 1: Mapping the World’s Digital Holocaust Memory Projects
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Building a Living Database, Part 1: Mapping the World’s Digital Holocaust Memory Projects

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Building a Living Database, Part 1: Mapping the World’s Digital Holocaust Memory Projects

By Dr Kate Marrison, Research Fellow, Landecker Digital Memory Lab Today the Landecker Digital Memory Lab launches its digital map of global Holocaust memory, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Research Fellow Dr Kate Marrison sets out its ambitious aims. This year marks a major milestone anniversary – 80 years since the end of the Second World War and thus, (more than) eight decades since the liberation of the camps. The UK Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s theme for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, ‘For a Better Future’ feels particularly pertinent as the Holocaust moves from an event in living history to forms of “mediated memory” (Young, 2000). Aligned with the Landecker Digital Memory Lab’s central mission of “ensuring a sustainable future for Holocaust memory in the digital age”, this moment offers an opportunity to look ahead and think critically about the possibilities of our digital futures. So, what does digital memory practice look like today and how might it shape Holocaust memory going forward? Listening across sectors After listening to more than 120 memory professionals, tech practitioners, educators, designers, curators, creatives and academics working in this field, we observed that the current digital Holocaust memoryscape is [...]

By Kate Marrison|2025-08-26T14:21:31+01:0015 April 2025|

Imagining Human-AI Memory Symbiosis
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Imagining Human-AI Memory Symbiosis

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Imagining Human-AI Memory Symbiosis

By Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, Director, Landecker Digital Memory Lab The editors of a recent journal special issue asked, ‘Is AI the Future of Collective Memory?’. Our Director and co-author Mykola Makhortykh were invited to answer this poignant question. The Problem of Anthropomorphism At the heart of our contribution to the special issue was an interrogation of the problem of anthropomorphism of AI. That is – the problem of describing AI using terms related to human activity to the extent that we tend to think about it as like us or even potentially better at doing human things than us. In the tech industry and in academic fields concerned with AI development, the narrative of artificial general intelligence (or ‘super’ intelligence) based on but one day superseding human cognitive capabilities served as a useful myth through which to market models and to attract vast levels of funding. This challenge has not simply come from critical thinkers in the humanities and sceptics, but from AI pioneers themselves, notably Nils Nilsson and Jaron Lanier. We took the question posed to us by the special issue’s editors Frédéric Clavert and Sarah Gensburger: ‘Is AI the Future of Collective Memory?’ and spun it [...]

By Victoria Grace Walden|2025-04-03T09:46:39+01:003 April 2025|

Behind the Scenes at the Lab: What’s in the Works?
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Behind the Scenes at the Lab: What’s in the Works?

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Behind the Scenes at the Lab: What’s in the Works?

It’s been an extremely busy start to the year at the Lab. Find out what we’ve been up to behind the scenes as we approach an exciting new phase of our programme. We kicked off 2025 by welcoming a new member of the team. Research Fellow Dr Ben Pelling has an academic background in History and his previous postdoctoral role focused on the impact of digitisation on conspiracy theories across Europe. Last month, he presented some work in progress related to our living database archive at the Sussex Digital Humanities Lab's Research Forum alongside some fascinating projects, including one about AI in music. Welcome Ben. We are very happy that you have joined the team. Holocaust Memorial Day Early February saw an excellent Holocaust Memorial Day programme hosted by University of Sussex, the first university in England to commemorate this annual event. Our Director Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden took part in a discussion and Q&A with founder and president of the UK Jewish Film Festival Judy Ironside MBE focused on the screening of Letter to a Pig. The short film is an Oscar-nominated animation Letter to a Pig (watch the 'making of'), which explores a young girl's dream after listening to [...]

By Mel Poluck|2025-08-01T09:59:04+01:0013 March 2025|