What’s New in Austrian Holocaust Studies? Digital Tools & Methods

EHRI-AT Methodological Seminar

16-18 January 2024 | Location: Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in Vienna, Austria

Deadline for submission: 15 July 2023

In the last decade, Austrian Holocaust research and education has gone digital.

In this rapidly evolving framework, the EHRI Seminar addresses the following questions:

• What are the topics in Austrian Holocaust research that are explored using digital tools, maps, databases, and digital repositories?
• Which new findings and approaches can be generated with geo-data? And how can you use geo-data in your research?
• How can we (re-)locate documents, memories, specific events by apps and digital maps? Which new spaces emerge through this layering of digital and on-site experience?
• Which databases exist to do research on the Holocaust in Austria? How can a cross-archival approach help to identify, verify, and re-assess names, places, and events across national and linguistic borders?
• How can we address the different quality of sources (visual sources, ego-documents, oral testimonies, perpetrator documentation, forms etc.)? What are the specific possibilities and limitations of these sources, and how can these be approached through digital methods and tools?
• How can researchers address a broader public through blogs, podcasts, and online exhibitions? Which skills and tools are needed to “go public” with your research?

Together with some EHRI-AT (EHRI-Austria) partners, the VWI will offer a methodological seminar to present and share digital tools and methods as well as reflections on theoretical concepts that are relevant for Holocaust Studies in Austria, in Central Europe and beyond. Therefore, we offer a diverse programme including input lectures, group discussions and presentations as well as city walking tours on specific Holocaust-related topics and visits to various archives and memorial sites in Vienna. In addition, there will be several opportunities for participants to offer brief, informal presentations on their current research on the Holocaust in Austria and receive input and suggestions from other participants and lecturers. The seminar will be held in person and in English. We are looking forward to applications from junior and senior researchers, archivists as well as people working in memorial sites or educational programmes.

The seminar is offered as part of the EHRI project and is supported by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme. It is organised by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute, part of the EHRI Consortium.

EHRI is dedicated to improving access to collections related to Holocaust history and providing infrastructural support for European Holocaust Studies by facilitating access to archival collections through the EHRI Portal and by stimulating innovative, interdisciplinary, and transnational research. Conferences, methodological seminars, fellowships, and workshops play a major role in fostering the exchange of knowledge and connecting Holocaust researchers, local activists, and archivists with the wider European Holocaust research community. As part of the seminar, participants will be introduced to the EHRI Portal, which contains information on 63 countries, over 2,200 archival institutions, and more than 410,000 archival descriptions.

Topics that will be presented and discussed at the seminar will include:

• Geo-referenced Holocaust related Data
• Holocaust related Databases
• Podcasts, Exhibition – Public History
• Oral History, Curriculum Development
• Visual Sources

The seminar will take place from 16-18 January 2024, at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in Vienna. Travel expenses, accommodation, and food will be supplied by EHRI. Locals who do not require travel or accommodation in Vienna are also encouraged to apply.

Please submit your complete application by 15 July 2023.

 A complete application must contain:

• a completed application form
• a curriculum vitae (maximum 2 pages)
• a description explaining your interest in attending this seminar as well as your research questions and topics and how it will assist you (maximum 2 pages)

Please submit your application to cfp@ehri.at. We will get back to you until the end of September.

If you are interested in this call, you may also want to check out another Call EHRI-AT | Holocaust Literature and Ego Documents, a conference of the Center for Jewish Studies of Graz University in cooperation with the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies in the framework of EHRI-AT, December 11-12, 2023 | Graz, Austria | Deadline for submissions: 15 July 2023.

Image: © Wiener Wiesenthal Institute