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Public History Forum

Welcome to the website of the Public History platform, which creates a space for discussion about our relationship to the past. Since 2018, we have been organising every two years an international and interdisciplinary public history a convention for all those working on the topic of the past.

The recent edition

The fifth annual Public History Forum examines the theme of The Burdens of Heritage, to be held on November 26 and 27, 2026, in Prague.

We live in an inherited world, surrounded by a heritage of all kinds: tangible and intangible, natural and cultural, desired and unwanted. While we gaze toward an integrating Europe, we stumble over the remnants of national narratives and prefer to hide the vestiges of dark histories deep in our pockets. We meticulously dust off the family silver of monuments and national culture, while behind our backs, the environmental crisis persists. Is heritage the precious core of our identity, or can we carelessly discard it the moment it ceases to serve us?

The fifth edition of the Public History Forum will offer two days of debates on the theme of historical heritage from the perspective of memory, culture, and art in the broadest sense. Heritage is represented in the public sphere across a range of fields and conveyed through a broad spectrum of media: from literature and film to museum exhibitions and video games; from history education, popular culture, and memorials to heritage preservation, tourism, and historical events. The aim of the conference is to examine the ways in which society engages with its heritage in the public sphere and to explore ways to work with heritage in an inspiring manner in the present. The forum is open not only to historians and theorists but also to practitioners and creators from the fields of audiovisual arts, heritage conservation, museology, and education. We will focus on the following thematic areas, but we welcome contributions from other fields as well.

Thematic Areas:

• Heritage in Institutions / The Heritage of Institutions: This area includes contributions that examine the role of institutions in managing heritage, as well as those reflecting on how institutional representatives approached their heritage and legacy and how they worked with them. This track focuses on local, national, and transnational institutions of various types. We welcome papers that critically examine specific institutions, highlight examples of best practices, apply approaches from critical heritage studies to the Czech context, or chart shifts in attitudes toward heritage. This section is open, among others, to staff at museums and galleries, historic sites, educators, professionals working in tourism, archive administrators and curators, and staff of non-profit organisations and associations. 

Keywords: museums and galleries, schools, heritage conservation, heritage education, archives, media archives, tourism, UNESCO, non-profit organisations and associations

• Heritage and Identity: This track focuses on the identity-forming aspect of heritage at various levels—family, local, national, or European. We welcome contributions that explore how heritage is linked to power and how it affects emotions and bodies. How do we decide what we consider heritage? When is heritage inclusive, and when does it lead to exclusion? We welcome contributions from anyone addressing these themes in their research, artistic works, or civic initiatives. 

Keywords: identity, power, affect, trauma, burden, inclusion/exclusion, national heritage, European heritage, global heritage

• Heritage in Media Contexts: In this section, we are interested in heritage as presented through the media, but also in the media themselves and their history as a distinct form of heritage. We invite those who study the media, as well as those who work with them as artists, journalists, designers, or critics. Through this track, the conference opens up to creative and communicative approaches in researching the role of heritage in society. 

Keywords: art, digital media, popular culture, mass media, intermedia relations, media as heritage

• Heritage of the Future: How will concepts, institutions, and heritage objects themselves fare in the Anthropocene? Developments in the academic field that direct attention toward the global climate crisis and toward a planetary and more-than-human perspective also touch upon the concept of heritage. Does it make sense to distinguish between natural and cultural heritage? How do these concepts enrich one another? We particularly welcome contributions that transcend established disciplinary boundaries, seek new concepts and new monuments, or offer a fresh perspective on those that are familiar, frequently visited, or even forgotten. 

Keywords: Anthropocene, materiality of heritage, more-than-human heritage

The organizers of the fifth annual History in Public Space forum are the Museum of Czech Literature, the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Arts at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts, the National Museum, and Antikomplex, z.s.

Past Editions

2024

Memory Under Pressure: Tension, Conflict, Catharsis

2022

Global Memory

2020

History in Public Space II: Exhibiting the Past

2018

History in Public Space: Czech Society and Historical Anniversaries