Digital Mapping and Memory: Recollection and Mediation in The Memory Map of the Jewish East End and the Jewish Manchester Memory Map

Lichtenstein, Rachel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1229-2149, Hay, Duncan and Vaughan, Laura (2024) Digital Mapping and Memory: Recollection and Mediation in The Memory Map of the Jewish East End and the Jewish Manchester Memory Map. European Journal of Jewish Studies. ISSN 1025-9996 (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper presents two digital public history resources concerned with the everyday lives and reminiscences of Jewish people in two cities in the United Kingdom: London and Manchester. Using techniques derived from Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and the spatial humanities more broadly, these resources take the form of interactive maps which compile recordings of oral history interviews with background research, documentary photographs, and historical maps. Drawing on the work of Raphael Samuel and Pierre Nora, and the insights derived from space syntax urban research and what we have termed ‘memory mapping’, we discuss the tensions between memory, which in Nora’s sense refers to the past as it is recalled informally and colloquially, and history, the academic study of the past. Digital mapping technologies, we argue, shape new opportunities for exploring the relationship between these two modes of historical thinking. Through a consideration of specific examples taken from the two digital resources, we discuss how bringing these materials into dialogue with cartographic maps opens new avenues for spatially and historically situated research into memory.