Mapping the Holocaust
Workshop
24 May 2024 | Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London
Call for Participants
The University of Manchester’s Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, the University of Oxford’s Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the Institute of Historical Research invite applications for a one-day workshop on Mapping the Holocaust. In examining the routes taken by people, objects, and ideas during and after the Holocaust, this workshop highlights the connections and diversions (geographically, temporally, topically, etc.) when attempting to ‘map the Holocaust’.
This workshop asks participants to challenge how they conceptually view their own work and how historiography has understood the physicality and mapping of the Holocaust. Moving beyond transit routes and migration, this workshop considers both empirical and theoretical approaches to mapping, asking: ‘What movements of the Holocaust have been under-explored?’ ‘How do we examine issues of returns/remaining?’ ‘What role does mapping have in shaping Holocaust memory, representation, and research?’ ‘How can we establish temporal or geographical boundaries when mapping the Holocaust?’
This workshop, open to PhD students and early career researchers, offers participants an opportunity to share works in progress in a collaborative and engaging environment. We will actively examine how our research relates to methods of mapping movement, gaining a further understanding of research currently being conducted within the discipline. As the purpose of the workshop is to re-investigate traditional notions of mapping the Holocaust, we invite applicants to bring their current work – regardless of whether it directly involves mapping or movement – to the workshop. The sessions will then be spent actively interrogating how the applicants’ work engages with or is influenced by movement and Holocaust mapping.
Suggested areas of interest include (but are not limited to):
- Human movement (refugees, military forces, anticipated journey making, forced movement/displacement)
- Movement of objects (letters, photographs, suitcases, etc.)
- Movement of finances (humanitarian aid, religious financing, private funding)
- Mapping memory (museums, memorials, media)
- Mapping knowledge (i.e. how can we trace movements of what was (un)known?, through newspapers, letters, etc.)
- Direction and time (returning, remaining, pre- and post-war movement)
- Mapping itself (handwritten maps, digital maps, maps from the event and after)
Applicants are invited to submit a short bio (150 words) and an abstract (350 words) to niamh.hanrahan@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk, cailee.davis@st-annes.ox.ac.uk, and barnabas.balint@sas.ac.uk. Applications close on 1st March 2024.