War & Difficult Pasts
Stories of war, persecution, genocide, repression, conflict and the contested remembrance of violent pasts.
Democratic Participation in Digital Public History
Who owns memory in the digital age?
Who is remembered? Whose voices become visible? Who has the authority to interpret the past?
Who Owns Memory? is an international participatory public-history project exploring how difficult, marginalised and contested pasts are researched, interpreted and shared in the digital age. Through workshops, historical sources, oral testimony, photographs, archives, maps and digital storytelling, the project examines not only what we remember, but how memory is created, communicated, contested and made visible.
VoiceWho is remembered and who remains absent?
EvidenceHow do sources become public narratives?
ResponsibilityWhat changes when memory enters digital space?
First cycle · 2026
An international public-history community
The first cycle brought together researchers, educators, archivists, heritage professionals, artists and civil-society practitioners to be trained in digital public history methods and tools and turn focused historical research into accessible, evidence-based and ethically responsible public stories.
~300applications from around the world
65participants selected & trained
20+countries represented across the cohort
39individual & collaborative projects developed
15+workshops, lectures, exchanges & public activities
Digital Exhibition
Five themes into the past
Projects are grouped thematically, but the categories remain deliberately porous. A story may connect migration with place, family memory with archives, or digital representation with difficult histories.
Migration & Belonging
Histories of migration, forced displacement, exile, diaspora, borders, minority experience, identity and belonging.
Place & Local Memory
Projects that read landscapes, neighbourhoods, monuments, museums and historic sites as evidence of remembered and absent pasts.
Testimony & Family Memory
Stories built through oral history, family memory, photographs, personal collections and community archives.
Digital Memory & Democracy
Projects examining how history is created, circulated, contested and distorted through digital platforms, archives, AI and media.
Public-history practice
Question → evidence → interpretation → public
Do not begin with a tool. Begin with a focused question, audience, evidence and ethical plan.
The project treats digital public history as a method of historical inquiry and public engagement. Sources are contextualised instead of used as decoration, testimony is approached critically and ethically; absent voices are acknowledged instead of invented, and digital form is chosen because it serves the story.
Explore the methodShared methodological case
From local history to digital public history
The Holocaust of the Jewish community of Corfu was used throughout the training as a common demonstration case for source criticism, testimony, ethics, place, narrative and digital interpretation.