HOLOCAUST HERITAGE
IN THE 21ST CENTURY.
CALL FOR PAPERS
EHRI
This call for papers for a conference, from which invited papers will be published in a handbook on Holocaust heritage, comes at an important juncture in time. 80 years after the Holocaust, as the survivor generation passes away, our attention turns to the sites where Jews were persecuted and murdered. We find that many sites - and with them, Holocaust memory - are facing unprecedented threats. The recently launched International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Charter for Safeguarding Sites (2024) identified 16 types of major threats, risks and challenges to the significance of Holocaust sites in the present. Such threats range from climate change to damage in armed conflict, political misappropriation to inappropriate reuse, and from lack of acknowledgement to lack of heritage legislation protection.
The aims of the conference and resulting handbook are not only to document the state of Holocaust sites and sites of the genocide of the Roma at this major anniversary, but to showcase good practice solutions as well as drawing attention to the loss, damage and destruction of other sites. This handbook will reflect on the (potential) uses of the IHRA Charter and will reflect the situation at the range of Holocaust sites listed in the Charter, such as mass graves, killing sites, concentration camps, labour camps, forced march routes, ghettos, sites of so-called 'euthanasia' and medical experimentation (etc), and to provide coverage of sites across Europe and further afield today. We welcome theoretical approaches as well as the more practical (and the digital), and equally value papers that focus on individual or multiple case studies, or situations across entire regions or countries.
It is intended that the conference in Cambridge will result in a major handbook on Holocaust heritage to be edited by Professor Gilly Carr (University of Cambridge, UK), Dr Steve Cooke (Executive Director of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, Australia), Tali Nates (Director of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre), and Dr Alexandra Janus (ESHEM). The handbook will include papers by academics, heritage professionals and practitioners, Holocaust site managers and directors, activists, NGOs, and stakeholders. The approach will be interdisciplinary, with perspectives from archaeologists, historians, and those working in heritage studies, Holocaust studies and memory studies. It is intended that this handbook will be a state-of-the-art publication at this important juncture in time.
Taking the IHRA Charter as our point of departure, we welcome papers on themes including (but not restricted to):
• The state / status of sites of Holocaust heritage in the 21st century in Europe today
• Theoretical and / or practical approaches to Holocaust heritage
• Intangible Holocaust heritage
• Major well-known sites or lesser-known small sites
• The temporary, transient and ephemeral sites
• The ‘lost’ / unmarked sites
• The controversial, disputed, denied, misappropriated and silenced sites
• Sites of the genocide of the Roma
• Sites of so-called 'euthanasia' and medical experimentation
• Archaeological approaches to Holocaust heritage
• Sites on the margins
• Sites of multiple victimhood
• Multi-phase sites
• Digital approaches to Holocaust heritage
• Sites of Nazi persecution
• Views from the field from NGOs, activists and stakeholders
• Sites of perpetrators and collaborators
• The use of sites in Holocaust education
• Post-Holocaust heritage
Deadline for expressions of interest (both of speaking at the conference, and / or submitting a chapter for the handbook):
1 March 2026
Deadline for biography (max 150 words) and abstract (max 250 words) (for either / both the conference and / or handbook): 1 May 2026
Conference: 7-8 September 2026
Submission of chapters to editors: 15 March 2027 (followed by reviews and editing)
Submission of chapters to publishers: 15 September 2027.
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and online, University of Cambridge, UK, 7-8 September 2026
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