Luke Boswell is a master’s student studying Archives and Records Management at the University of Liverpool. His EHRI-UK Regional Placement at The Fed focused on categorising and inputting data from the fifty-five books created by the My Voice project. Each tells the life of a Holocaust survivor or refugee who escaped Nazi persecution and settled in the UK, and Luke’s placement built on a previous EHRI-UK Regional Placement project to create a database of themes and tags that will help the team at The Fed to identify stories from the collection for use in educational materials. In addition to researching the collection and managing data, Luke joined the team from The Fed to deliver their event at Marple Hall School where survivor Anne Super read from her My Voice book ‘Citizen of the World’. 

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"Looking to the future, the placement has helped solidify that I want to pursue work as an archivist, curator or researcher within heritage, ideally within ethnic minority history or memorialisation. The amount of ideas for exhibitions, educational resources, volunteer programmes, and partnerships are endless. Furthermore, the field has a direct, positive impact on tackling racism, radicalisation, and promoting multiculturalism and understanding… This placement has better equipped me to embark upon my first official research role and has boosted confidence in my overall abilities."

Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum - Harri Flynn

Harri Flynn, a master’s student in Modern European History at University of Oxford, undertook a placement at Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, on a project to catalogue material related to the liberation of Bergen Belsen. Harri’s role involved searching the archives for all items that were related to the liberation and any subsequent memory and memorial engagements done by the Oxfordshire Yeomanry. This involved object handling, the creation of archive lists, and working closely with SOFO staff, volunteers, technical support staff and interns. Harri particularly enjoyed working with collection of photographs of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen given to members of the battery and has written a blog ‘Bringing Belsen Back to Banbury: Tony Ginger’s Photobook’ contextualising the origins of the photobook and its curation and display at the museum. 

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"Having the opportunity to work in the intersection of archival, museological, and academic work was a dream for me, as someone who recently finished their modern history masters and is figuring out what to do in the future. Getting access to behind-the-scenes learning at the museum whilst also engaging with all aspects of the daily running due to its size has been an invaluable lesson to inform me how much I truly love helping make history accessible. To also have the support from the museum in extending historical research into the archival documentation has been brilliant. I cannot wait to see the future endeavours relating to this history that will soon be possible with researchers gaining access to the archive list."

Imperial War Museum, London - Laura Gibbs

Laura Gibbs, a master’s student in Archives & Records Management at University College London, was based at IWM London for a placement that focused on developing collections relating to South-Eastern Europe and LGBTQ+ Jewish people in the museum’s Holocaust galleries. Laura’s role involved reviewing current collections using and assessing potential loans. Additionally, Laura was involved in reviewing a collection of private archival material held by a private donor and joined the IWM team on a visit to view the materials and speak with the owner. During her placement, Laura worked closely with Clare Lawlor (Clore Duffield Foundation Holocaust Curator) and Stephen Walton (Senior Curator, Second World War) and had the opportunity to assist the organisers of the 2026 conference of the British and Irish Association of Holocaust Studies, held at IWM.

"I felt incredibly privileged to undertake work that would help to shape IWM’s holdings. In particular, during the placement I visited a donor for the first time and observed the processes undertaken before archival material arrives in a museum. Shadowing Clare Lawlor as she interacted with the donor before, during, and after the visit also gave me a firsthand insight into the crucial interpersonal communication skills necessary for this kind of work."

The Wiener Holocaust Library
- Yelyzaveta Kartavenko

Yelyzaveta Kartavenko, a final-year History student at King’s College London, undertook her placement at The Wiener Holocaust Library in London. The project focused on the library’s printed collection, cataloguing items so that they can be identified by readers and researchers. Yelyzaveta’s work catalogued donations of Yugoslav books and other Eastern European publications, mostly in Russian. Her ability to read Russian and Ukraine was a particular strength during the placement, enabling Yelyzaveta to work through the Slavic-language donations directly rather than relying on translation. Additionally, Yelyzaveta worked with the Library's photograph archivist on a collection of photographs of Belarusian partisans and assisted in identifying individuals through open-source research. The placement also offered the opportunity to work closely with the team in assessing which donations fall within the library’s collecting scope, and the process of selecting and preparing material for off-site storage.

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"The placement has made me genuinely interested in collections work as something I might want to do. Having spent three years using archives as a historian, it was clarifying to see the work that makes them usable, and to realise how much of what a researcher eventually finds depends on decisions taken at the point of cataloguing."

University of Sussex Special Collections
- Ianthe Latham

Ianthe Latham, a final-year History undergraduate at the University of Liverpool, undertook a placement as Digital & Discoveries Officer at the University of Sussex Special Collections. The project was based at The Keep Archive Centre in Brighton and focused on organising, interpreting, and digitally cataloguing the personal and professional papers of Austrian-Jewish journalist, Hella Pick. Ianthe’s role included the creation of detailed catalogue and collection descriptions and involved independent research, transcription of handwritten material, organisation and indexing of the physical items, and the creation of metadata entered into the archive’s data management system. Ianthe was given the responsibility of selecting items for digitisation, designed how they would be displayed on Sussex Digital Collections website, and wrote item descriptions with an overarching narrative to accompany the images on the online catalogue.  

"Overall, this placement has further developed my interest and built my faith in myself to pursue a career within the heritage sector. The archives have been an ideal place to work hands on with historical documents as a first step in starting a career in public history. Over the last three months, I have thoroughly enjoyed working towards my final project of the Sussex Digital Collections site and I have become highly invested in telling Hella Pick’s life story. My knowledge of 20th century German-Jewish history has developed massively in a short time due to the intensive nature of the placement and I am eager to continue expanding on this newfound interest in many ways."