EHRI-UK Annual Lecture: Transnational Holocaust Research in a Digital Age

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) is an international infrastructure securing Holocaust research, commemoration and education on a trans-national level. EHRI-UK is the national node representing the United Kingdom within this international research consortium.

Each year the EHRI-UK Annual Lecture is hosted by a different institution in the UK, and this year the honour falls to the Parkes Institute at the University of Southampton. This year's lecture will be in the form of a roundtable discussion between senior members of EHRI covering topics including the significance and changing character of Holocaust research in a digital age and how EHRI works to bring people, sources and resources together through a state-of-the-art digital infrastructure. It is a wonderful opportunity to hear from some of the leading researchers, archivists and cultural heritage specialists from the 11 EHRI member countries on their first joint visit to Southampton and we hope you will join us for an intellectually stimulating discussion.

Speakers

Michal Frankl is the head of the department “Knowledge and Participation” of the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe. He is the author of "Prag ist nunmehr antisemitisch" (2011), a history of Czech antisemitism at the end of the 19th century and together with Miloslav Szabó of Budování státu bez antisemitismu? (Building of a State With No Antisemitism?, 2015), an analysis of antisemitism in the transition from the Habsburg Empire to the Czechoslovak nation state. With Kateřina Čapková, he wrote Unsichere Zuflucht (2012), a critical history of Czechoslovak refugee policy in the 1930s. His last book (Občané země nikoho, Citizens of the No Man’s Land, 2023) examines the rapid appearance of no man’s lands for refugees at the end of the 1930s and the ethnonational reorientation of citizenship in Eastern and Central Europe. He was the principal investigator of the ERC Consolidator project “Unlikely refuge? Refugees and citizens in East-Central Europe in the 20th century” hosted the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Starting with 2025, he is the principal investigator of the project “Migration and us: Mobility, Refugees and Borders in a Humanities Perspective” (MyGRACE) funded through the Johannes Amos Comenius Programme. He served as work package leader in the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure projects and helped to develop the EHRI Document Blog, online editions as well as the Geospatial Repository.

Veerle Vanden Daelen is Curator and Director Collections & Research at Kazerne Dossin: Memorial, Museum and Research Centre on the Holocaust and Human Rights (Mechelen, Belgium). She holds a PhD in History from the University of Antwerp. Her dissertation examined the return and reconstruction of Jewish life in Antwerp after the Second World War (1944-1960). She has held fellowships at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies (University of Michigan) and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (University of Pennsylvania). Besides numerous articles, she has authored two books, Vrouwbeelden in het Vlaams Blok (Ghent, 2002) and Laten we hun lied verder zingen. De heropbouw van de joodse gemeenschap in Antwerpen na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (1944-1960) (Amsterdam, 2008). Veerle is actively involved in the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) and is member of the Belgian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). She is also affiliated to the University of Antwerp, where she has taught courses on Migration History, Jewish history, and other topics, and where, together with Karin Hofmeester, she organises the annual “Contact Day Jewish Studies on the Low Countries” at the Institute of Jewish Studies.

Michal Brandl is an Associate Professor at the at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Chair of Jewish and Holocaust Studies. Her research interests include Jewish history in Croatia in the 20th century, especially in the immediate postwar period, and Jewish heritage. She has held JDC Archives Fellowship in 2017. She is currently the chief research consultant to the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) and to the Claims Conference on the restitution of the Jewish property in Croatia, as well as the national coordinator for the Croatian National Node in European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI-HR) and a member of the Croatian delegation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Her recent publications include two books: Appropriation of Jewish property in Croatia: Zagreb as a case study (Zagreb: Leykam international, 2022) for which she received the Annual national award for science in the field of and Židovi u Hrvatskoj nakon Holokausta [Jews in Croatia after the Holocaust] (Zagreb: Leykam international, 2023) and numerous articles.

Rachel Pistol is Director of the UK Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI-UK) and Chair of the EHRI-ERIC National Coordinators' Committee, one of the two governing bodies of EHRI. Rachel completed her BA, MA, and PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London under the supervision of the late Professor David Cesarani OBE, writing the first comparative study of Second World War internment in the UK and the USA. Her research interests continue to develop the field of internment studies and she is also a scholar of refugees from Nazi oppression who sought refuge in the UK during the 1930s and 1940s. In 2024, Rachel joined the department of History and the Parkes Institute at the University of Southampton having previously worked at King’s College London as a digital historian on the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI), the University of Exeter, and at Royal Holloway. In 2022 she became the Historical Advisor for World Jewish Relief, formerly the Central British Fund and is working on new ways to make their extensive archive on refugees to Britain during the 1930s and 1940s more accessible. Rachel is also a Committee Member of the Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies (EXILE).

Event information

This event will be held in-person.

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