Jungblut Joins Netherlands Conference on Digital Testimonies

Karen Jungblut, USC Shoah Foundation director of research and documentation, participated in the “Digital Testimonies on War and Trauma” conference in June. Held at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the symposium brought together scholars from all over the world to address the use and impact of digitized narrative collections in relating the horrors of warfare.

Jungblut gave a presentation about the evolution of the Shoah Foundation’s policies regarding access to its Visual History Archive, including the ethical and practical considerations involved. She also chaired a session that featured presenters from Sabanci University in Istanbul on “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Using Digital Testimonies in Contexts of Continuing Conflict”; The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague on the “Memory of Nations” platform; and the University of Connecticut on “The Chechnya Memory Project.” In addition, Jungblut lent her expertise to a PhD master class on memory and conflict.

Conference organizers invited Jungblut after her involvement in an expert meeting at the Hague Institute for Global Justice in January. She notes that the Shoah Foundation is considered a leader in the field of recording, archiving, and providing access to the digital testimonies and oral histories of war and trauma.