Academic background
The Memorecord crowdsourcing initiative is part of the PhD research project entitled Shaping a digital memory platform on migration narratives: A public history project on migration memories in Luxembourg, conducted by Anita Lucchesi at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) at the University of Luxembourg and funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund.
The aim of her PhD project is to study migration memories and narratives in Luxembourg, combining a multifaceted cultural history framework with a systematic historical analysis of the mediated memories of migrants. Approaching the subject from the perspective of “history from below” and using an innovative methodological apparatus built on digital public history methods, this research is designed to cultivate an alternative means of storytelling through digital technology, engaging community members by acknowledging their own role as players in history. One of the main outcomes of this research project, as well as the PhD thesis itself, is the community-based development of the Memorecord platform, which is designed to harness an alternative digital approach to storytelling about migration in Luxembourg and share memories of different generations and communities online. The results of this crowdsourcing experiment will hopefully take this research beyond the standard narrative about migration in Luxembourg. What lies behind and beyond the successful story of migration in Luxembourg?
The central empirical challenge of this project is the process of building and running the platform as an example of doing public history using digital tools and technologies. The platform will serve as a space to test digital history methods (e.g. crowdsourcing, web scraping, social media analysis, distant reading and topic modelling) and to actively engage with the subjects of the study. In doing so, the project aims to contribute to Luxembourg historiography on migration and to reflect on methodological and epistemological debates in the field of digital public history/digital humanities, by evaluating the effect of digitally enabled methods and the specific characteristics of digital source criticism with regard to the historiographical process.
The original research proposal, submitted to the Luxembourg National Research Fund, can be found here.
Community participation
The #memorecord crowdsourcing experiment relies on community participation. The researcher believes that participant’s memories and personal accounts can help us to understand more about the historical aspects of migration in Luxembourg.
All public posts on Facebook and Instagram tagged with the project hashtag (#memorecord) will be shared on our social networks and displayed in the website gallery, under Stories. The collection policy respects the privacy settings of users and their original posts on Facebook and Instagram, so only posts that are open and public will be collected. If a post is deleted on Facebook or Instagram, it will be deleted from our social networks and from our website gallery as well.
One of the main questions #memorecord wants to answer is “What is behind and beyond the successful story of migration in Luxembourg?”. The more people participate, the more diverse our collection and the more wide-ranging and democratic our answer can be.
#memorecord welcomes Luxembourgers and migrants of all nationalities to share their memories of migration in Luxembourg. All languages are welcome. Add your piece to this mosaic of memories. Tell us your story. Joint the harvest!
Memory harvest
A series of real life events – face-to-face exchange and collection days – will accompany the online crowdsourcing, so members of the community will be able to get to know the researcher in person and interact with other participants of the project.
The events will be announced on the project website under Memory harvest.
Privacy
Memorecord respects the privacy settings of users and their original posts on Facebook and Instagram. Only posts that are open and public will be collected and displayed on this website. Memorecord will not access any private posts.
By adding the project hashtag (#memorecord) to their public posts, users join the #memorecord project. A link and preview of the post are displayed on the #memorecord gallery under Stories and the original post may be consulted directly on Facebook or Instagram. If at any point a post is deleted by a user in his or her social media accounts, it will also be deleted from the #memorecords gallery.
If you have any further questions, please contact Anita Lucchesi, the project curator.
