Venue: Hörsaal 27, Main Building of the University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna

Questions of historical politics and cultures of remembrance are once again in the focus of public attention. After the phase of its globalization and institutionalization, Holocaust memory seems to be subject to a far-reaching process of change. The lecture tries to outline the current status and the current challenges in the European, "Western" and global context. This raises (again) questions about the significance of Holocaust remembrance in European migration societies, not least in times when immigration to Europe is perceived as a crisis; and at the same time about the global competitive relationship between the memory of the Holocaust and the memory of crimes of European colonial powers in the world - none of which are new questions, but still increasingly relevant and controversial.

Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Dirk Rupnow is Professor at the Department of Contemporary History, University of Innsbruck. Born in Berlin, he studied history, German studies, philosophy, and art history at the Free University of Berlin and in Vienna. He completed his Mag. phil. in Vienna in 1999, his Dr. phil. in Klagenfurt in 2002, and his Habilitation in Vienna in 2009. In 1999/2000, he was a project researcher of the Historical Commission of the Republic of Austria. He has been invited as a guest to numerous research institutions in Austria (IFK, IWM), Germany (Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture), France, Israel, and the USA (Duke University, Dartmouth College, USHMM). He received the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History from the Wiener Library, London, in 2009. Since 2009, he has been working at the University of Innsbruck, becoming Head of the Department of Contemporary History in 2010. Since 2018 he serves as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and History. In 2017, he was Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair at Stanford University, in 2022 Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University Jerusalem. His research interests include European history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Holocaust and Jewish studies, commemorative cultures and the politics of history, the intellectual history, migration history, and museology.