Monthly Archives: September 2025

Programme and Registration for Fons: Primordial Origins from Myth to Archaeology

Received from Dr. George Brocklehurst (School of Advanced Study, University of London) Dates: 5 – 6 November 2025 Location: Magdalene College, Cambridge CB3 0AG Programme (as of 22 September 2025) Registration (free) Past and Present is pleased to support this event and supports other events like it. Applications for event funding are welcomed from scholars working in the field of historical studies at all stages in their careers.          

Tracing the Holocaust: Uses and Challenges of the International Tracing Service Archive

By Niamh Hanrahan (University of Manchester) On May 19, 2025, graduate students, academics, archivists, and researchers came together at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London to discuss the history of tracing individuals persecuted by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. The workshop, generously joint funded by the Royal Historical Society and the Past and Present Society, was organised by Barnabas Balint and Niamh Hanrahan. It focused on exploring the opportunities and challenges presented by one particular collection: the International Tracing Service Archive. At the close of the Second World War, millions of people were displaced across multiple continents. Parents, children, and siblings searched for their missing relatives. Thus began decades of tracing. Many of these searches were carried out by the International Tracing Service (ITS), which gathered and generated millions of pages of documentation. These documents now make up the ITS Archive, accessible at the Arolsen Archives in Germany and digitally in sites around the world. In 2011, it was announced that the Wiener Holocaust Library would become the UKs copyholder for this archive. Since then, Holocaust survivors and their descendants, alongside researchers and members of the public have been able to access over 30 million pages of […]