EHRI Workshops

Between 2015-2019, EHRI organized several workshops (hosted by our partners in Europe, Israel and the USA), for multidisciplinary groups of experts and other interested individuals, including researchers, archivists, conservators, technology experts, and representatives from relevant intitiatives and projects. The calls of these workshops are published on this page.

You can read reports (if available) of workshops that have taken place by clicking on the titles (in red).

List of EHRI Workshops, phase 1 (2010-2015).

Call for Applications for an EHRI Workshop on Holocaust history in public space

“It happened here!” Digital and shared: Holocaust history in public space

1-2 April 2019

Location: Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Vienna, Austria

We welcome proposals on all aspects of making Holocaust documentation digitally available in the space of the community. Mobile maps and the constant accessibility of information, as well as more experimental technologies like augmented reality, are changing our perception of the present as we move around in our daily life or while we travel. Do these technologies also affect how we consume and understand information about the past in space? This workshop organised by EHRI and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies aims to have a fresh look at how Holocaust documentation is made available in the space where the historical events unfolded.

Deadline of submission of proposals: 31 January 2019. THIS CALL IS CLOSED.

Exploring Refugee Data

12-13 November 2018

Location: Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republik

We would like to invite proposals for a workshop on refugees and digital humanities, organized by EHRI and EHRI’s cooperating partner the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Taking Nazi-era refugees as a departure, the workshop wishes to examine methods and possibilities of digital historiography of forced displacement, and in a broader sense of digital methods, of capturing human mobility in history.

Deadline of submission of proposals: 31 July 2018. THIS CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

Readings of the Visual: Holocaust Photography and Education in the Digital Era

October 18–19, 2018

Location: Ionic Centre, Athens | Hosted by the Jewish Museum of Greece

We would like to invite you to an international workshop on Readings of the Visual: Holocaust Photography and Education in the Digital Era s to be held by The Jewish Museum of Greece, Athens, on 18-19 October, 2018.

Over the last decades, the visual has become a vital part of education as well as an important topic in academic discussions. The workshop “Readings of the Visual” aims at rethinking the role of Holocaust photography in the educational process, taking into consideration the demands of the digital era. In a time when various photographs are disseminated through several channels (tv, social media etc), how do we make use of photographs in a meaningful and reflective way? What can we learn from the new digital practices? This workshop wishes to combine the theoretical debates along with the educational experience and to suggest new ways of making the most of Holocaust photography in the educational process.

Deadline of submission of proposals: 31 July 2018. THIS CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

Person-related Records beyond the Personal – Documents as primary sources with potential for Holocaust research

19-21 November 2018

Location: International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen, Germany

This workshop will focus on collections of person-related records such as registries, forms, applications documents from before and after the Holocaust. Those are seen as a specific type of primary source (similar to photos, videos, etc.), unique in their potential for Holocaust research and as an example for the challenges of improving archival access. The aim is to discuss best practises in dealing with such sources from the archival and scholarly perspective as well as the perspective of information sciences.

Speakers of various professional backgrounds are welcome, such as historians, archivists, information scientists, museum curators, legal experts etc.

Deadline of submission of proposals: 3 August 2018. THIS CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

Jewish Heritage Records and Digital Humanities

4-5 September 2018

Location: King’s College London, UK

Building on successful past collaborations, the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe (RFHE) and the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) are pleased to announce their joint 2018 Digital Humanities Interdisciplinary Methods Workshop on Jewish Heritage Records and Digital Humanities. The workshop, which will take place on 4-5 September 2018 at King’s College London in the Department of Digital Humanities, aims to expose early career scholars and heritage professionals to a range of digital techniques that might be applied both within the field of academic Jewish Studies and within memory institutions managing Jewish heritage records. The workshop will introduce participants to digital tools and methods that may help them to structure, present and gain insights from their data.

Application deadline: 22 May 2018. THIS CALL IS NOW CLOSED!

Engaging New Generations: The Holocaust and Knowledge Dissemination in the Digital Age

9 November 2017

Location: NIOD, Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam

Young people often combine a great interest in the Holocaust with a low level of knowledge. That, at least, was the outcome of a recent digital survey that was conducted by EHRI with respondents from a variety of ages, education levels and nationalities. For these same young people, the Internet is the first place they turn to when searching for information. As a result, digital media are crucial when developing tools to address new generations and the way they relate to the Holocaust. The recent Yolocaust-internet-art-project – that combined selfies from the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with footage from Nazi extermination camps – might have been controversial but also shows par excellence the potential of digital media in this field. The project – already removed from the Internet – exposed the way young tourists behaved at the monument and contributed to (self-reflective) critical discussion.

At the conference ‘Engaging New Generations; The Holocaust and Knowledge Dissemination in the Digital Age’ we will question how recent digital developments, in particular those driven by creative and digital industries, can support Holocaust-related cultural and research institutions to extend their societal outreach. We focus on young people as a target group of consumers and – where possible – as producers of (digital) knowledge. We intend to bring together researchers and representatives of small and medium sized enterprises that contribute to Holocaust-related knowledge dissemination. In addition, we also aim to evaluate experiences with and discussions about (un)conventional non-digital media and explore recent comparable developments in the field of Genocide Studies.

Deadline for submission of proposals: 31 July 2017. THIS CALL IS CLOSED!

Standing up to Scrutiny: Authenticating Holocaust Documentation

23-25 October 2017

Location: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, USA

Call for Proposals for an international EHRI workshop on authenticating Holocaust documentation to be held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, on October 23–25, 2017.

For any field, ensuring authenticity is essential. All disciplines have confronted forgeries, and Holocaust studies is no different. We rely on authentic documentation to provide the foundation for Holocaust education and to combat Holocaust denial, revisionism, and minimization. Holocaust documentation exists in many formats: print, textiles, objects, photography, film, and recorded sound. This historical record has been gathered by institutions around the world. Ensuring the safety, accessibility, and authenticity of these materials is a fundamental duty of all Holocaust collection-holding institutions, especially as we make this documentation accessible to the broadest audiences through digitization and online access.

Non-authentic documentation can include misinterpreted and misrepresented documents, altered authentic documents, and outright fakes. Holocaust organizations rely on both forensic and historical evaluation to determine authenticity. This workshop will bring together experts to share experiences and best practices for acquiring collections and identifying non-authentic materials and/or provenance.

This workshop for experts is organized within the framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) program, supported by the European Commission. EHRI was launched in November 2010 and is dedicated to opening up collections related to Holocaust history within a web-based environment. The overall objective of the EHRI workshops is to generate a creative exchange of knowledge and views between experts in various methodological subfields of Holocaust research and documentation.

Deadline for submission of proposals: 10 July 2017 (extended). THIS CALL IS CLOSED!

Data Sharing, Holocaust Documentation and the Digital Humanities. Best Practices, Case Studies, Benefits

29-30 June 2017

Location: Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea – CDEC Foundation and the Università Cà Foscari, Venice, Italy

In conjunction with the international LODLAM Summit, Venice, 28th-29th June 2017

We would like to invite you to participate in the international workshop on” Data Sharing, Holocaust Documentation and the Digital Humanities. Best Practices, Case Studies, Benefits”, to be held in Venice on 29-30 June 2017.

Launched in November 2010, the main goal of EHRI is the implementation of a research infrastructure, which enables collaborative work in Holocaust research and documentation. As part of the infrastructure work, EHRI integrates archival metadata across institutional, national and language boundaries, making it searchable and helping researchers to find relationships between archival collections. This context makes the deployment of efficient data collection, sharing, processing and integration technologies and approaches (including semantic technologies) crucial to achieve success in the implementation of the infrastructure.

semantic integration — Image by Ontotext

The EHRI workshops are organized for the purpose of generating a creative exchange of knowledge and views between professionals in various subfields of Holocaust research and documentation, along with experts outside the field of Holocaust studies who can share their experience and methodologies.

Together with the development of data sharing utilities for collection holding institutions, EHRI develops controlled vocabularies such as authority lists of people, corporate bodies, Holocaust related entities like ghettos, camps or administrative districts of occupied territories as well as a hierarchy of concepts for the indexing and retrieval of Holocaust related archival material.

We aim to share this knowledge with other research communities.

The aims of the workshop are:

Presenting the state of the art of data sharing practices and technologies starting from the experiences and results obtained in the EHRI project
Discussing the usability and potential of data sharing in the Humanities
Investigating the possible connections between the EHRI Project and other Research Infrastructures and Digital Humanities Projects

Deadline for submission of abstractions: 2 May 2017. THIS CALL IS CLOSED!

Online Access of Holocaust Documents: Ethical and Practical Challenges

6-8 June 2017

Location: the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, Bucharest, Romania

We would like to invite you to an international EHRI workshop on Online Access of Holocaust Documents: Ethical and Practical Challenges to be held by the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, Bucharest, on 6-8 June 2017.

This international workshop addresses museum and archive professionals as well as Holocaust scholars and Digital Humanities professionals.

Holocaust documentation is of great interest to the wide public: scholars, museum and archive professionals, educators, journalists, survivors and their families and the general public. Open access to this material has an important role in facilitating research and Holocaust education and in fostering a remembrance culture. In the digital and information age, the free flow of information is considered a key contributor in providing access to knowledge. The emerging field of Digital Humanities provides the tools for making information accessible, by bringing online documents and artifacts held by collection holding institutions. In order to enable online access of Holocaust documents, national and international legal policies, as well as institutional guidelines, need to be considered, and technical challenges need to be surmounted. Providing online access to the archival information poses significant ethical and practical challenges.

Deadline for submission of proposals: 9 March 2017. This call is closed!

Call for Applications for an EHRI Workshop on Holocaust Archival Film Footage

Holocaust Archival Film Footage as a Historical Source. Methodology and Ethics in the Digital Era

19-21 September 2016

Location: Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel

We would like to invite you to participate in the international workshop on Holocaust archival film footage to be held at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem on 19-21 September, 2016.

Archival Footage is filmed documentation of historical or personal events created by official authorities, local entities, and individuals, professionals as well as amateurs. Archival footage is an important source for Holocaust research, and it is a major element in the construction of the visual memory of the Holocaust. As such, it is a highly important source of information on individuals and communities; it has a significant role in shaping Holocaust consciousness, commemoration and scholarly research, especially in the current audio-visual digital era. This footage should be approached as any other historical document: it should be viewed critically, and cross-referenced with other sources before it is catalogued and utilized in any context.

Deadline for Applications: 1 June 2016. This call is closed!

17 November 2015

Location: DANS, The Hague, The Netherlands

You are cordially invited to an EHRI workshop at DANS, in The Hague, the Netherlands, on 17 November 2015 on the topic of workflows that archives use to catalogue and publish information about their holdings. The workshop aims to get input from people who are part of the cataloguing workflow.

Topics

How do you make people more aware about your archival holdings? Is it difficult and time-consuming to reach your public digitally? Would you like to communicate to your website users that you are part of a digital infrastructure and the advantages this brings? Are you part of a project that wants your institution to provide metadata but you run into technical problems and need specialist skills?

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) would like to help archives to publish their finding aids in ways that are useful for people and for computers; after all computers are now users too!

Deadline for Applications: 9 November, 2015. This call is now closed!