In his latest book, Performing Public History: Case Studies in Historical Storytelling (Routledge, 2025), David Dean argues that bringing the past to life through non-traditional media invites us to re-think how we do history work. In lieu of a traditional book review, IPH offers an edited transcript of an International Federation for Public History Explorer’s event held on April 2, 2026.
Iranians who lost loved ones during the revolutionary period (1979-89) have struggled with trauma for more than 40 years. The pain of loss and the knowledge of the torture that happened in the prisons have haunted Iranians who have unintentionally tried to process their trauma through public history. In this article I explore some of these cases by drawing upon interviews I conducted with family members, using them to provide a theoretical framework that demonstrates how generational experience contributed to the ways families, largely unaware of this historical field, utilize public history for healing purposes. Oppression has forced Iranians to engage with audiences as limited as one's family or as broad as on a global scale. As some Iranians have moved into diaspora, and with the transition of developed trauma into an inherited form, the fear of oppression has decreased generationally, increasing the levels of engagement with the public. This has encouraged Iranians living inside the country to join in such efforts on a larger scale. Whether public, semi-public, or less-than-public, all cases demonstrate how the process of healing has evolved into a form of resistance that strives for engagement while defying the forces that seek to silence them.
This article examines the intersections between memory activism, academia, and public history through the case of the Traveling Museum of Memory and Identity of Montes de Mar & iacute;a, known as El Mochuelo, in the Colombian Caribbean. The museum, a peripatetic and community-driven initiative, travels across 15 municipalities affected by decades of armed conflict, using interactive and largely non-material displays rooted in oral traditions and cultural practices. Drawing on long-term engagement with the project, the article argues that El Mochuelo exemplifies how collaboration among activists, scholars, and local communities can produce meaningful and situated understandings of the past. Rather than treating research and activism as opposing domains, the case demonstrates their productive convergence, highlighting shared ethical and political commitments. Situated within broader debates on memory activism and decolonial museology, the article shows how grassroots initiatives challenge official narratives, foreground marginalized voices, and contribute to processes of symbolic reparation and community rebuilding. By emphasizing creativity, resistance, and interdisciplinarity, El Mochuelo reveals the potential of public history as a flexible and engaged practice that bridges academic inquiry and social justice work, ultimately questioning the possibility of neutrality in contexts marked by violence and historical injustice.
This article describes the design of a locative mobile phone app, Rijeka Fiume in Flux, for exploring the past of Rijeka, a city that was historically contested, first between Hungary and Croatia in the 19th century, and then between Italy and Yugoslavia in the 20th century. It evaluates how successfully it disrupts ethno-national narratives about the city’s identity. Modelled on experiential learning and polyvocality, the app seeks to share historical knowledge from multiple perspectives with a broad audience, while also enabling users to explore the past based on their curiosity and experiences moving through the city, provoking engagement with the multifaceted stories of the city. Focus groups with students of different ages, place of residence, and language groups offers useful insights on the potential of such apps to tell new stories about contested heritage. One category of feedback concerns the appeal as well as drawbacks of technology, including the consequences of encountering technical malfunctions, and larger questions concerning the alienating effects of technology. The second concerns the challenges of attracting and maintaining the interest of the intended audience. The third concerns the effects of engaging with the contents of the app. Overall, the feedback confirms the potential of apps to disrupt and create new narratives, while also highlighting specific challenges that require targeted attention in order to develop effective apps.
The convergence of new and old media technologies invites a renewed focus on orality, and it also makes possible oral history goes public in Asia. In an embodied interview space, orality, affect, and memory interact. Public oral history in Asia is emergent and complex. This article explores that emergence, that complexity. With a selection of case analysis in Asian context, the study argues how public oral history has emerged as an affective engagement with the past, and how that engagement has actively shaped the public memories.
