New initiative to improve access to Holocaust-related collections

We have become a founding member of EHRI-UK – the national body representing Holocaust-related collections in the United Kingdom. The other founding members are the Wiener Holocaust Library, the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London and the Parkes Institute at the University of Southampton.

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) has been supporting Holocaust research, commemoration and education on a trans-national level since 2010, with funding from the European Commission. It is now entering a new phase as a permanent legal organisation with government support from each participating nation.

EHRI-UK will strive towards the long-term sustainability of Holocaust research within the UK and beyond by representing UK institutions (and Crown Dependencies) that hold materials related to Holocaust Studies. EHRI-UK has been awarded initial funding for the first five years from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) but hopes to secure long-term support and continue developing its work.

The partners will connect resources using a digital infrastructure named the EHRI portal. Over the coming years, there will be opportunities for UK archives with Holocaust-related collections to contribute collection descriptions to this portal.

As a partner, we will advise the project team and wider sector on all aspects of cataloguing for archives wishing to share their collections to the EHRI portal. We will also support UK archives to upload Holocaust collections to our catalogue, Discovery, and handle any data transfers from Discovery to the main EHRI collections portal, widening access to the UK’s Holocaust-related collections.

From 2025, there will be callouts for EHRI-UK National Research Fellowships. These are designed to support researchers, archivists, librarians, curators, junior scholars and PhD candidates, who might otherwise lack resources, with Holocaust research.

There will also be an EHRI-UK Regional Placement Scheme, led by archival and heritage institutions, which will aim to provide postgraduate and undergraduate students with the opportunity to work on projects in locations across the British Isles. Through this scheme, project partners will be able to provide opportunities for short-term internships that will train and upskill students in archival and heritage sciences.

You can keep up to date with this initiative, and any future callouts, by signing up to the EHRI-UK newsletter.