This three-day workshop and one-day public conference, co-hosted by QUB’s Centre for Public History, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the University of Virginia’s Woodson Institute for African American Studies and Center for the Study of Religion, interrogated the challenges facing scholars and museum professionals as they seek to address difficult or traumatic pasts.

This was the second of two such events, the first having been held at Queen’s University Belfast in 2023. Like Belfast, Charlottesville, Virginia, is a city in which narratives of the past remain deeply divided and where the material culture of conflict is still very present. It therefore provided an appropriate comparative context in which to explore some of these issues.

Scholars and practitioners from Europe and north America working on the public histories of US race and slavery, the Holocaust and the Northern Ireland conflict spent three days together exploring such themes as the presence and absence of memorials to difficult pasts in urban landscapes, the challenges of representing difficult histories in public, how to account for the voices omitted from archives and museums, how community and family histories might be used to return these voices, and what ethical considerations need to be taken into account when dealing with data and artifacts resulting from difficult histories. On the final day the group, which included QUB’s Professor Olwen Purdue and Dr Briony Widdis, presented their research to a large public audience.

Speaking after the event, the USHMM’s Director of Research, Dr Robert Ehrenreich said

“Only by placing our work in conversation with other approaches and histories can we truly start to understand the roots of community prejudice, conflict, and divisiveness and stand any chance of learning from and teaching the lessons of the Holocaust and other difficult histories.”

Director of the Centre for Public History, Professor Olwen Purdue, added

“ We cannot underestimate the value of exploring comparative contexts in helping us understand the dynamics and tensions at play when dealing with difficult pasts and how to address these in ways that build tolerance and awareness in today’s world”.