3 International interdisciplinary seminars in Poland and Norway for educators, experts and students from universities in Norway, Poland and Germany
The 3 international interdisciplinary seminars were designed and organized within Jewish Cultural Heritage project by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Falstad Centre together with an international group of experts. The goal of the seminars was to reflect on social memory and to network educators, experts and students from Norway, Poland and Germany.
The POLIN Museum and the Falstad Centre have invited for working on this project an international group of experts and higher education lecturers from Poland, Norway and Germany. Together they have planned the seminars, organized them and actively participated in them.
The international group of experts were already very experienced within the field of social memory – they have conducted several student workshops and seminar activities related to the topic of Holocaust in Lodz, Sztutowo and Riga in the years 2016-2019.
Three international interdisciplinary seminars, known as “Prejudice – recognizing and reacting” took place from 2021 until 2023 in Poland and Norway.
The seminars “Prejudice – recognizing and reacting” were conducted by experts from the POLIN Museum and Falstad Centre and by educators from Bergen, Volda, Hamburg, Berlin, Warsaw and Wroclaw* in Warsaw in 2021 (without students due to the Covid19 situation), both with students in Warsaw in 2022 and in 2023 in: Oslo/Utøya (module 1) and Falstad (module 2). The seminars are covered in this publication and will also be presented on a congress at Polin Museum in October 2023.
Whilst Holocaust memory culture has long relied on witness descriptions which now gradually disappear, communicating the memory includes a transition from lived culture to the culture of experts and mediated communication. At the same time, the impact of legacy media is changing, the habits of young people’s use of media are in a flux and the political European landscape can be considered challenging. Antisemitism and racism have not only been part of history, but are very much contemporary phenomena we are facing in all forms throughout our societies.
In the international, interdisciplinary seminars, we are dealing with communicating sensitive topics (Holocaust, antisemitism, racism) to younger generations and observing how young university students from within the fields of media, art, design, communication and psychology approach this communication challenge. The students in this project developed ideas and concepts in a short period of time, based on research, lectures, exhibitions, presentations, group working and coaching.
* University of Bergen (Norway), Volda University College (Norway), Hamburg Media School (Germany), Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), University of Warsaw (Poland) and SWPS Wrocław (Poland).
“The multinational topics of racism and antisemitism have been discussed through the lens of (inter)national case studies from a superficial perspective. What was interesting were the different ideas that students from various disciplines came up with to combat this kind of discrediting and discrimination. By actively contributing to individual project ideas, sensitivity to these issues was heightened, and knowledge was deepened.”
Xenia, Freie Universität Berlin, 2022
The 3 Seminars from 2021-23:
SUPERVISORS:
The workshop supervisors are multi disciplinary experts from a variety of European universities covering the fields of film studies, public history, design, psychology and journalism. They are multinational individuals from the following organisations: Volda University College (Norway), the University of Bergen (Norway), SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Wrocław, the University of Warsaw (Poland), the Hamburg Media School (Germany) and the Centre for Contemporary History/Free University of Berlin (Germany). The supervisors were supported by colleagues from the Falstad Center (Norway) and the POLIN Museum (Poland).
Irmgard Zündorf
FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN
Kathrin Lemme
HMS HAMBURG MEDIA SCHOOL
Thomas Lewe
VOLDA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
Hilde Kramer
UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN
Krzysztof Moszczyński
SWPS WROCŁAW
Kamila Zochniak
UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW
Jon Harman
VOLDA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
Sebastian Klein
FALSTAD CENTER NORWAY
Christina Svarva
FALSTAD CENTER NORWAY
Magdalena Dopieralska
POLIN MUSEUM WARSAW
Małgorzata Waszczuk
POLIN MUSEUM WARSAW
Joanna Longfors
POLIN MUSEUM WARSAW