Facing the Past. Public History for a Stronger Europe (EUROPAST)

Project idea

Public history helps to engage citizens in the co-production and communication of the past while maintaining ethical and methodological standards, including an awareness of the role of gender at all stages in the process. As a citizen science of the past, it draws on techniques of crowdsourcing and storytelling to enrich institutional narratives through community involvement. By creating physical and digital spaces for public engagement, it strengthens social cohesion, resilience, and democracy.

Governments routinely invest significant resources in programs for heritage conservation, culture, and historical education. But the effectiveness of such programs requires significant expertise, a strong policy framework, and robust transnational dialogue founded on shared values. In view of the “memory wars” raging across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) over the legacy of the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, excellence in research, outreach beyond academia, and transnational collaboration are critical.

To meet this need, scholars at Vilnius University from the fields of history, sociology, communications, politics and international relations created the interdisciplinary Public History Group. The group has shaped a collaboration with leading researchers from the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, the Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology (Lund University), and the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (University of Luxembourg), to develop a Twinning project that enhances the scientific excellence and research capacity of VU and strengthens the profile of its staff in public history.

Building on the potential of networking for excellence through knowledge transfer and exchange of best practices, the EUROPAST project aims to:
1) leverage the expertise and programs of leading European institutions to increase the capacity of the interdisciplinary Public History Group at VU;
2) raise the research profile of VU and strengthen capacities for the management of research;
3) form a national centre of excellence, which will assimilate and transfer the state of the art in public history onwards to the broader community of researchers, practitioners and institutions at the national, regional (CEE) and EU levels.

Participating institutions

Vilnius University (coordinator, Lithuania), Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History (Germany), Lund University (Sweden), Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH, Luxembourg).