Project Details
Projekt
From the Era of the Witness to Digital Remembrance: New Media, Holocaust Sites and Changing Memory Practices
Subject Area
Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Term
since 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 502423016
The core objective of the proposed project is to study the ongoing transformations of Holocaust commemoration in the digital generation. Our leading questions are twofold: How do digital media technologies generate new kinds of memory practice? And how do such practices of digital remembrance interact with more established memory practices that are anchored in places such as visits to concentration camps, museums and monuments? The ethnographic and interdisciplinary approach of the project provides a much-needed analysis of how established and emerging memory-practices juxtapose and entangle with one another.A particular strength of the proposed project is its transnational structure, which allows us to study the Holocaust-related memory practices of the digital generation in both Israel and Germany. Rather than assuming that digital technology is a global leveling force, we ask how it influences Holocaust memory in different cultural contexts. The project is conducted by two project teams, each offering particular research competencies that effectively complement each other: the project team at the University of Tübingen (Germany) brings together strong research experience in the field of museum and heritage studies (PI Thiemeyer) and digital anthropology (PI Bareither). The project team at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) combines experience in Holocaust studies and tourism (PI Feldman), political science (PI Kook) and media and communication studies (PI Tirosh). Working closely together, the project teams will conduct ethnographic observations of the use of digital devices at memorial sites and museums (picture-taking and posting, the use of smartphone-conveyed information at sites, other online practices); investigate the strategies employed by site personnel to cope with the new developments; engage in emerging technologies of Holocaust remembrance such as AI-based virtual survivor testimonies; analyze the representations of Holocaust sites on social media; and study the digital dimension of alternative forms of grassroot memory practices. The project’s places of inquiry are physical places such as memorials and museums in Germany and Israel, as well as digital spaces constituted through social media platforms, hashtags, and ‘virtual memorials’.A review board of five internationally renowned scholars and practitioners from Israel and Germany will support the successful dissemination of the results – not only in the form of several publications (peer-reviewed papers, dissertations and an edited volume), but also in form of a conference held at a prominent heritage sites on which we will explore innovative forms of public engagement and use the project results to foster a public dialogue on critical questions of digital Holocaust remembrance.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Israel
International Co-Applicants
Professor Dr. Jackie Feldman; Professorin Dr. Rebecca Kook; Dr. Noam Tirosh
