The EUI Material and Visual History working group hosts its next workshop on the role of early-career historians in the public sphere from a material perspective.
This workshop will share four testimonials of early-career historians who employed their skills outside academia to collaborate on the elaboration of museum exhibitions, journals, or TV shows. Through their individual initiatives, the workshop will conduct a reflection on the ways in which historians can convey their research and interact fruitfully with the public.
Elena Demke (Humboldt University) will present her work for the online museum MAD: Museum Anderer Dinge based on research on the meaning of things in experiences of mental crisis, madness and of psychiatric intervention. By mingling the interdependency of narratives and objects as well as observations on the interactions of interviewer and interviewees, the exhibition developed an object-driven process through which interviewees became confident donators for a museum can be made feasible.
Clément Fabre (PhD researcher, Paris 1) will share his experience as a coordinator for the TV show Faire l’Histoire on the French-German TV channel Arte, that largely relies on material culture as a medium for crafting historical narratives. He will then present his work for L’Histoire, a widely distributed public history magazine that seeks to disseminate the newest historiographical reflections and debates to the francophone public.
Margot Elmer (PhD researcher, EUI) will present her contribution in battle to save the original building of the Université Nouvelle (opened from 1894 to 1919) with the municipality of Brussels and local heritage associations. One of the original buildings was discovered unaltered after a century with several architectural aspects of the institution, but that it was endangered by a private building permit.
Maxime Guttin (PhD researcher, EUI) will present his experience as a researcher for the Museum of Immigration in Paris by the time of the remaking of its permanent exhibition. Through the specific study of objects dating back from the outmigration of European protestants in the seventeenth century, he will offer a glimpse into the different stages of the making of the museum, from its conceptualisation to the practical gathering of materials.
Please register to get a seat or to receive the ZOOM link. For more information, do not hesitate to contact Elisa Chazal.