Based in Vilnius and the transborder region of Lithuania and Belarus, this Summer School is devoted to the heritage of missing ethnic groups in the aftermath of genocide and traumatic population shifts, or heritage of atrocity. Its goal is to introduce junior scholars to the recent history of violence in this part of Central-Eastern Europe and to equip them with interdisciplinary tools to analyse how the memory of the absent (missing Jewish population, relocated ethnic minorities, silenced historical narratives) is being handled by the local inhabitants, factored into the dominant narratives (museum exhibitions, tourist information folders, etc.) and represented in space (the invisible and forgotten sites related to the absent ethnic minorities, Holocaust sites and other contested sites).

Taking as a case study the Lithuanian-Belarusian borderlands, the Summer School will offer unique hands-on workshops in historical and ethnographic methodologies. Joining talks of invited experts with field-trips, it will allow young researchers to apply the acquired skills in oral history interviewing techniques, ethnographic photography, or digital history. Finally, the Summer School will also offer an outreach to the local population, involving the inhabitants into a curatorial intervention that will visualize the forgotten sites of “difficult heritage”.

The Summer School is open to PhD researchers and young scholars from the fields of history, ethnography, Eastern European Studies and related disciplines. Travel, accommodation, visa and other costs are covered by the organizers. Applicants are invited to send their CV and a cover letter describing their field of interest by March 30th 2016 to: difficult.heritage@gmail.com

Further Info:
JProf. Dr. Magdalena Waligórska, University of Bremen: mwaligor@uni-bremen.de