Dr Gilly Carr invited to join IHRA

Dr Gilly Carr, Senior Lecturer and Academic Director in Archaeology, has recently been invited to join the 12-member UK delegation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). She will be one of two academic members of the UK delegation, which is headed by Sir Eric Pickles of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and will be part of the Academic Working Group of the organisation. Her first meeting was in Iaşi, Romania, from 6-10 November this year. Romania currently holds the Chairmanship of IHRA; next year it will be the turn of Switzerland and the plenary meetings will be held in Geneva and Bern.

IHRA is an international body with 31 member countries focusing on the sole mandate of Holocaust-related issues. It promotes Holocaust education, remembrance and research and is committed to the Stockholm Declaration of 2000.

Gilly was invited to join IHRA because of her work in the Channel Islands, which has for many years focused on victims of Nazism. She has been particularly active in raising awareness about these people through heritage (such as through exhibitions, the erection of memorials and the design of heritage trails), and this year won the University of Cambridge Impact Award for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences for this work. She is currently working on a digital heritage project on Channel Islanders deported to Nazi prisons and concentration camps for acts of resistance. This is being funded by the German EVZ Foundation.

Gilly’s areas of research also include conflict archaeology, post-conflict heritage studies, and POW archaeology. She is currently co-editing a special issue of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology on the material culture of Nazi camps, inspired by her own project in Jersey, where she has been excavating the forced labour camp of Lager Wick.