Events
Inaugural Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo 2025
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.
When is it?
24th-26th June 2025
Details
We have a packed in-person programme, but it is also possible to watch and participate in a select number of events online. See our remote access programme below:
Tuesday 24th June
18.00-19.30 BST (UTC+1) Keynote I: Pixels and Hashtags of the Past: The Holocaust in the Digital Age
Dr. Eva Pfanzelter (University of Innsbruck)
As Holocaust memory migrates into the digital realm, it risks being unmoored from the historical gravity that once anchored it. The proliferation of digital technologies has not simply transformed remembrance practices but has, in many cases, trivialized, commodified, and depoliticized them. In online spaces where virality outperforms accuracy, the Holocaust is increasingly reduced to hashtags, fragmented into emotive but decontextualized narratives, and flattened into generic lessons on human rights. Looking at the historical evolution of “digital Holocaust” I argue that the digitalization of memory introduces a uncomfortable ambivalence: while democratizing access, it simultaneously erodes historical specificity and fosters a new, sanitized cosmopolitanism that reduces the sharp edges of past violence. Is the global, digital Holocaust memory we are cultivating today still capable of resisting oblivion—or is it becoming just another consumable spectacle?
Through a critical analysis of evolving digital practices—from curated museum websites to chaotic social media commemorations—this talk traces the merging of traditional memory structures with newly emerging, unstable forms of historical engagement. Drawing on theories of transnational and multidirectional memory, I contend that the connective turn has produced a memory landscape where authenticity and appropriation coexist uncomfortably, and where collective remembrance is as likely to be shaped by misinformation and denial as by education and solidarity. Holocaust memory, once a bulwark against forgetting, now floats in a digital ether where its meaning is perpetually renegotiated, diluted, and endangered. If memory is indeed a political act, then the digital age demands not celebration, but a sober reckoning with the possibilities—and profound risks—of remembering online.
Wednesday 25th June
14:45-16:15 BST (UTC+1) Dialogues I Launch: Computer Games and Holocaust Memory
Guest Chair: Nick Webber (Birmingham City University and Historical Games Network)
Provocateur: Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden (University of Sussex)
Contributors: Silvina Fernandez-Duque (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), Jörg Friedrich, (Paintbucket Games), Tabea Widemann (Zeppelin Museum), and Alina Bothe (Freie Univeristät Berlin)
Digital Memory Dialogues is a new publishing platform initiated by the Landecker Digital Memory Lab, thanks to our funding from the Alfred Landecker Foundation. It seeks to create dialogue across disciplines and sectors, bringing together stakeholders from Holocaust museums, memorials, archives and libraries, and educational organisations; academics; and creative and tech professionals to discuss and debate issues related to digital Holocaust memory.
Each ‘Dialogue’ is structured as a thread of conversation, starting with a provocation piece, followed by a series of responses, with each response peer-reviewed by the other respondents before publication. Provocateur and Respondents then meet in a live, public online discussion to wrap up their dialogue. To launch ‘Dialogue I’, we are hosting the first discussion as a hybrid event – both in-person and streamed online from the Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo.
The theme of Dialogue I is computer games and Holocaust memory. Once the very idea of making a computer game about this past was considered taboo, and yet now, as the programme for this Expo demonstrates, there is far more acceptance that this medium might be appropriate for engaging with the Holocaust. Our provocation, however, asks, have we really made a computer game about the Holocaust yet? Are there particular ethical redlines game creators, heritage professionals, academics and others are fearful of crossing in terms of what can be made ‘playable’? What are the consequences of these barriers for how the Holocaust is perceived and experienced in games spaces? Our conversation will discuss these questions and more, pulling on themes in each of the responses published on www.digitalmemorydialogues.com from late May 2025.
16:45-18:30 BST (UTC+1) Roundtable: What is the Future of Holocaust Memory on Social Media?
Chair: Prof. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Discussants:
Ton Mascini (Anne Frank House), Dr. Iris Groschek (Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres Commemorating the Victims of Nazi Crimes), Laura Nicolli Kullock (Holocaust Museum Curitiba, Brazil), Samson Wollenberger Schevitz (PARTNERS PARTNERS & COMPANY), and Katja S. Baumgärtner (associated at Selma-Stern-Center for Jewish Studies)
With the transformation of Twitter into X, the announcement that many platforms are abandoning fact-checking ‘guardrails’, and the argument that apps like TikTok are no longer social media but ‘algorithmic media’ (Liang 2020), what good is the social media landscape for Holocaust memory today? On one hand, these platforms can provide access to wider and newer audiences, and call historians and curators to think differently about how to present educational and commemorative material in short form. On the other hand, they can expose staff and their community of online followers to antisemitism, distortion, and hate. Furthermore, research has shown that the same institutions which dominate Holocaust memory public discourse offline get far more engagement online than most others (Makhortykh and Walden 2023). In the space between these extremes, there are multiple examples of diverse engagement in Holocaust memory across such platforms, but how productive are they?
In this roundtable, we invite academic experts on social media and Holocaust memory, those leading accounts at major museums and memorial sites across the world, and a PR professional working on the project ‘Shoah Stories’ to discuss how they navigate this ever- changing landscape. What works? What doesn’t? What challenges do they face? What good does social media do for Holocaust memory? And what is the future of Holocaust memory on these platforms, if there is indeed one?
Thursday 26th June
Prof. Paul FMJ Verschure (SPECS Lab, Alicante Institute of Neuroscience, Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche & Future Memory Foundation)
In 2025, we mark 80 years since the end of World War II and the revelation of the horrific reality of the Nazi regime, which demanded a new vocabulary: Shoah, Holocaust, Genocide. “Never again” became the rallying cry for remembrance and prevention, yet mass killings and the erosion of international norms continue. This failure to translate “Never again” into action prompts reflection. Despite a vast global network of commemorative and educational sites, little attention has been paid to defining and achieving meaningful learning outcomes. This lack of impact has been masked because survivors provided a crucial calibration, but their voices are fading. Without them, this foundational history risks to be distorted and instrumentalized or the instrumentalization of the commons.
To address this, we developed Future Memory: a new paradigm using authentic Nazi crime- related sites as scaffolds for immersive, constructivist active learning. Rather than imposing static narratives, learners explore complex histories through personalized Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences. Future Memory is grounded in neuroscientific and psychological principles, enabling embodied, individualized engagement with the “Chronotope of the Holocaust.” I will present ongoing Future Memory projects, their technological realization, and empirical evidence showing superior educational outcomes compared to traditional methods. I will also explore the ethical challenges, especially around using AI in Holocaust education. Finally, I will outline the Future Memory roadmap to connect roughly 100 historically significant sites in a unified educational infrastructure to contribute to “Never again”.