DigiCONFLICT will explore the impact of digital heritage on contemporary engagements with the past in specific national frameworks in Poland, Sweden and Israel and takes specific interest in multimedia museums, oral histories and photography as the most common media employed in the creation and dissemination of digital heritage. Even though digital heritage maintains the potential to increase cohesion across nations and social groups, it is equally used to cement elite power structures, define what counts as cultural heritage, and determine whose cultural heritage is worthy of preservation. While acknowledging the role digital heritage plays in shaping and distributing cultural heritage, the project’s point of departure is that digital heritage cannot be considered in separation from historical, cultural and national contexts.
The project has three main aims: 1) to explore how national politics affect digital definitions of cultural heritage, 2) to investigate who creates and engages with digital heritage, and how, and 3) to study how the scope and value of cultural heritage are being negotiated and reformulated in a digital context.
Malin Thor Tureby is PI for the Swedish research team who works with the research project Oral history as digital heritage in the age of migration. The study is focusing on the involvement of cultural heritage institutions and other actors, while collecting, curating and using oral histories during the refugee reception 2015. The Swedish study is financed by antiquities, Dnr RAÄ-2017-5067.