We’re pleased to announce the launch of our innovative publishing platform Digital Memory Dialogues. To move work forward in the domain of digital Holocaust memory, it is crucial we work across disciplines and sectors. Computer scientists, media theorists, historians, educators, curators, archivists, digital designers, project managers, programmers and software developers all need to come together. Digital Memory Dialogues creates a space for this in the spirit of the academic tradition of dialectics: to introduce a difference (dia) into discourse (logos). To seek truth from the in-between spaces that emerge when different voices, expertise, disciplines and perspectives come into conversation with one another. Dialogues is different to other publishing spaces because it foregrounds conversation. Each series or ‘Dialogue’ is structured by a provocation piece written by one of our editorial team or a guest editor, to which a selection of contributors are invited to respond. The conversation then grows through the peer review process, with each contributor reviewing the others’ work, before the discussion is opened up to a public audience at a live event. Today, we launch Dialogue I – Computer Games with the provocation piece entitled: ‘Can the Holocaust be Made Playable?’ In the coming weeks, this provocation will [...]

If you represent an organisation or project dedicated to Holocaust memory, integrating digital media in your work, the Landecker Digital Memory Lab wants to hear from you. The Lab aims to ensure a sustainable future for Holocaust memory in the digital age through rigorous research and inter-sector dialogue between today’s ‘memory makers,’ as living memory fades. The results of the survey will inform a global map of digital Holocaust memory initiatives including virtual or mixed reality projects to online exhibitions, computer games, social media, AI and digital integrations in exhibition spaces. Understanding this landscape will help us to prepare fieldwork to track, share and archive digital Holocaust memory projects, and capture interviews with those involved in developing them (read examples of this work in our Spotlight blogs). It will also feed into our wider research on what digital Holocaust memory looks like at a global scale. We are asking contributors to submit their input through this online survey which asks questions about: On-site and online digital media and projects. What social media channels you use. Changes in visibility of Holocaust distortion and denial via online channels. Digital strategy and capacity. Access the survey here: https://universityofsussex.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_41pxL14ImeECH78  If you have any questions, please [...]

Lab Director Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden took part in a lively Q&A discussion with Jewish Film Festival founder and President Judy Ironside MBE at University of Sussex’s recent Holocaust Memorial Day event. The discussion focused on a screening of Letter to a Pig, an Oscar-nominated Israeli-French short film about intergenerational trauma that mixes live-action footage with 2d computer animation, painting, photography and rotoscoping. The making of the film, by director Tal Kantor, is available freely on YouTube. Watch the discussion and Q&A (begins at 2 minutes, 42 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5kHgGcxBVM Before the Q&A, Holocaust survivor Peter Summerfield BEM gave an incredibly moving testimony about life under Nazi Germany and his escape to the UK. Watch a recording of Peter Summerfield’s testimony. Vice Chancellor Sasha Roseneil opened the event which was held at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA) and hosted by the Sussex Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies and The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) here at University of Sussex on 5 February 2025.

On Monday 18th November 2024, the Landecker Digital Memory Lab officially launched to an audience of c. 200 people joining us both in-person at the Imperial War Museum, London and from across the globe via our live-stream. The event saw our Lab Director Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden introduce our plans for the next five years, highlighting how our work has become more imperative since the amplification of antisemitism and Holocaust distortion, denial and contestation since October 7th 2023. You can read more about who we are, our aims, and our outputs across this website. Professor Richardson-Walden was joined by a series of special guests. Lena Altman, Co-CEO of our funder and key project partner, the Alfred Landecker Foundation, who provided the welcome address. Then after the main presentation, Lord Pickles (UK Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues and President of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) addressed the bigger picture in which the Lab's work sits. He was followed by Professor Sasha Roseneil (Vice-Chancellor) and Professor Cornel Sandvoss (Executive Dean of the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities) both offering the view from the University of Sussex, addressing how the Lab's work complements the university's wider values and emphasising the importance of [...]

What is it? Our inaugural ‘expo’ seeks to bring together Holocaust heritage and education experts, policymakers, academics, and creative and tech professionals to share practice and research, learn more about digital Holocaust memory pasts and present, and to connect and begin to design digital Holocaust memory futures! This is not your usual ‘academic conference’, rather we hope to offer lots of opportunities for hands-on play, experimentation and learning; networking; and showcasing excellent practice as well as research.   Where is it? Brighton, UK   When is it? 24th-26th June 2025   Call for Contributions  Holocaust memory as a cultural phenomenon is not solely shaped by the actual, cognitive remembering of those who lived through this traumatic past. For commemoration to persist long into the future, the significance of the past must be taken on bodily, cognitively, and culturally by those who did not experience it. Co-mmemoration is a fluid, ongoing, creative, collaborative process shaped by an increasing number of actants – human and non-human. Whilst the voice of survivors will no doubt continue to be an essential element of Holocaust education, the memory-makers of tomorrow (and indeed today) are a diverse range of players: from curators, historians, pedagogues and archivists through to coders, programmers, social media managers, software engineers, and [...]

Dr Victoria Grace Walden and Dr Kate Marrison of the Sussex Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Sussex will be joined by an expanded team from the summer of 2024 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. The lab will sit across both the Weidenfeld Institute and the Sussex Digital Humanities Lab, benefiting from the rich research culture of both. Alongside the production of original research, the Lab’s activities will include: the development of a ‘living database-archive’, which will preserve recordings of digital projects dedicated to Holocaust memory complemented by interviews with 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. a new online publishing space dedicated to digital Holocaust memory with an international editorial board designed to promote interdisciplinary and inter-sector dialogues across digital spaces. a [...]