Details
At: 25/02/2025 2:30pm, in cooperation with:
Speakers:
Alina Volynskaya,
Julien Schuh,
Samuel Merrill,
Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden
Is AI the future of collective memory?, moderated by: Frédéric Clavert and Sarah Gensburger
This roundtable will explore the relationship between collective memory and (generative) artificial intelligence (AI), as AI is more and more used by heritage and memory institutions, to create ‘universal witnesses’ of the Holocaust or other historical events, for instance. Today, most research around AI and memory studies have focused on ethical considerations. The panellists, while not ignoring ethical issues, will nevertheless move beyond ethical considerations and focus on case studies involving collective memory issues and AI. This approach could help investigate AI systems as embedding practices of collective memory and help examine the impact of AI-generated artefacts on collective memory. Focusing on case studies will also help understand how the use of AI in memory studies can be a tool to explore the dynamics of collective memory, while exploring the huge methodological challenges of AI, including the question of biases. The panellists will delve into what memory studies can bring to AI, by providing insights into the temporality and spatiality of data used in machine and deep learning processes. Last but not least, the roundtable speakers will evoke the collective memory of AI itself, its mythologies, and narratives.
Poster’s Image Rights: Matt Korostoff
Speakers
Alina Volynskaya is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) at the University of Luxembourg. Her research explores the intersections of the history of science and technology, media studies, and Digital Humanities, with a particular focus on digital archives and their epistemologies.
Julien Schuh is a professor of French Literature (CSLF, Université Paris Nanterre) and deputy director of the MSH Mondes. He co-leads the Consortium-HN pictorIA (https://pictoria.hypotheses.org/), dedicated to the application of artificial intelligence tools in the field of visual culture within the humanities and social sciences. https://cv.hal.science/julien-schuh
Samuel Merrill is Associate Professor at Umeå University’s Department of Sociology and Centre for Digital Social Research (digsum) in Northern Sweden. He specializes in digital and cultural sociology and his research interests concern, among other things, the intersections between memory and digital technology, social media platforms, and Ai systems.
Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden is Professor of Digital Heritage, Memory and Culture at the University of Sussex, where she is currently Director of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab and Deputy Director of the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies. Her research explores the intersection between digital technologies and media cultures in relation to collective memory, especially regards commemoration and heritage practices.
Moderators
Frédéric Clavert is an Assistant Professor in European Contemporary History (C2DH, University of Luxembourg). His research focuses on the relationship between historians and their primary sources in the digital age on the one hand, and the use of massive data from web platforms in memory studies on the other. He is managing editor of the Journal of Digital History.
Sarah Gensburger is a Full Professor in Sociology Political Science at the CNRS and Sciences Po. A former president of the Memory Studies Association, she has been studying the social impact of public memory policies and contributed to the epistemology of memory studies for years. She published a dozen of books among which, recently, The Covid-19 Pandemic and Memory. Remembrance, commemoration, and archiving in crisis (with Orli Fridman (ed.), Palgrave, 2024) and De-Commemoration. Removing statues and renaming streets (with Jenny Wüstenberg (ed.), Berghahn Books, 2023).