The Summer School in Holocaust Literature and Film: Sites, Memory, Representation will be held in Wrocław between 7 and 11 of September 2026. It is organised and led by Professor Helena Duffy MAE from the University of Wrocław in close collaboration with the Wrocław Knowledge Hub of the Academia Europaea, the University of Edinburgh, and the French NGO Yahad In-Unum. Participants will explore contemporary literary and cinematic representations of the Holocaust, with particular attention to topographical sites that functioned as spaces of persecution, extermination, and commemoration. They will examine how these landscapes are reimagined in narrative and film and what role they play in commemorative practices. Finally, participants will consider the politics of these practices or their absence. Key thematic strands include landscape and spatial memory, the ecology of genocide and commemoration, and transcorporeality as a framework for understanding the entanglement of bodies, matter, and place.




The Summer School offers diverse educational and cultural activities. It combines formal lectures with interactive workshops, seminars, and film screenings followed by discussion. Participants will engage with the history of Lower Silesian Jews by taking part in a guided tour of sites connected to Jewish life in Wrocław and by visiting the former concentration camp of Gross-Rosen in Rogoźnica. Participants will also enjoy Ashkenazy cuisine by dining at the local Jewish restaurant “Sarah”. By attending the School and completing a written assignment, participants may earn 4 ECTS credits.

We are delighted to offer 35 partially funded fellowships to MA and PhD students as well as to postdoctoral and Early Career researchers worldwide. We cover the participation fee, accommodation, and some meals, as well as a range of educational and cultural activities. To apply, please send a completed application form (docx) to Helena Duffy (helena.duffy@uwr.edu.pl) by 1st June 2026.

About the 2026 Summer School in Wrocław#

The 2026 Summer School in Wrocław is supported by the Hubert Curien Fund, a prestigious grant awarded to enable Academy members to launch high-impact activities. By supporting this Summer School, the Curien Fund facilitates cross-disciplinary dialogue and helps bridge research boundaries across the European academic community.

The program exemplifies the Academy’s mission of knowledge dissemination and internationalization. The School explores contemporary literary and cinematic representations of the Holocaust, with particular attention to topographical sites that functioned as spaces of persecution, extermination, and commemoration. It examines how these landscapes are reimagined in narrative and film and how they participate in commemorative practices. The School also interrogates the politics of these practices or their absence. Key thematic strands include landscape and spatial memory, the ecology of genocide and commemoration, and transcorporeality as a framework for understanding the entanglement of bodies, matter, and place.

About Helena Duffy#

Helena Duffy MAE is a Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Wrocław and was elected as member of the Literary and Theatrical Studies Section of Academia Europaea in 2024.

Her research has been supported by prestigious grants and scholarship, including the Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship (2016-2018), the Fernandes Fellowship (2022), and the Käte Hamburger Fellowship (2026-2027), and by funding bodies such as the Soros Foundation, the National Centre for Science, and the University of Turku Institute for Advanced Studies. Since 2024.

Professor Duffy’s recent research introduces innovative perspectives to Holocaust studies, specifically through the lenses of ecocriticism, zoocriticism, and posthumanism. Her forthcoming project, Embodied Trauma Beyond the Human: Reparative Potential of Holocaust Literature, challenges anthropocentric views by examining how trauma affects both human and non-human organisms within their natural environments.

Her bibliography includes many journal articles and book chapters, and of two monographs: World War II in Andrei Makine’s Historiographic Metafiction (Brill 2018) and The Holocaust in French Postmodern Fiction (Legenda 2022). She has co-edited issues of academic journals such as Holocaust Studies, French Forum, Eastern European Holocaust Studies, and Journal of Holocaust Research, and three collected volumes: Storying the Ecocatastrophe (Routledge 2024), Trauma, Ethics, Hermeneutics (Legenda 2024), and The Holocaust and Ecocide in Culture and Public Debate (Routledge, forthcoming).

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