Mykola Makhortykh

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 [...]

The View From: Visiting Researchers

Last term, the Landecker Digital Memory Lab welcomed visiting researchers from University of Bern, Dr Mykola Makhortykh and Maryna Sydorova who specialise in humanities and data science with a particular interest in machine learning and AI. Find out about the productive knowledge exchange that took place. by Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, in conversation with Dr Mykola Makhortykh and Maryna Sydorova Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden: So, Mykola and Maryna, what did you do during your time with us at the University of Sussex? Dr Mykola Makhortykh: We did a lot in two weeks. We agreed to do a symposium on the use of AI for producing historical knowledge and possible considerations regarding it, and a guest lecture about some of our ongoing projects on the use of AI for (mis)representing modern armed conflicts. We also brainstormed future collaborations with the Lab team and possible funding applications. The Lab’s director Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden prepared a schedule of daily to-dos, so we got our fellowship period planned in lots of detail. For me, it worked really well and I think we had an incredibly productive time both in terms of networking with Lab members and other Sussex scholars. We got a [...]