MemAct! is an international project creating models of Holocaust education that address the ethics of civic responsibility. Fostering transnational cooperation and exchange, MemAct! focuses on participatory methods of teaching the history of National Socialism in museums, memorials and schools. It connects this form of historical education to interventions against discrimination and critical educational work against racism and antisemitism. The MemAct! project is a partnership of the Galicia Jewish Museum (Poland), Terraforming South (Serbia), EDAH o.z.(Slovakia), Miteinander e.V. (Germany) and Hartheim Castle ,Pädagogische Hochschule Oberösterreich , Museums of the City of Linz (Austria).
Core-Team
Gisela Hagmair (AT)
Freelance project manager with a focus on EU project coordination. She worked on several EU projects as a social scientist, including for the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Social Psychiatry (2008-2014), and specialized in EU project management. Since 2015, she has been working for the Universities of Klagenfurt and Graz in the field of EU project management and research project applications. She has accompanied MemAct! since its submission.
Paul Salmons (GB)
Director of the museum exhibition and educational development company Paul Salmons Associates. Curator of the international award-winning exhibition Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.
Chief Curator of the exhibition Seeing Auschwitz for UNESCO and the United Nations, currently in San Sebastian, Spain.
Consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Formerly, Paul helped to create the United Kingdom’s national Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum; co-founded UCL’s Centre for Holocaust Education; and played a leading role in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an inter-governmental body of more than 30 member states.
Wolfgang Schmutz (AT)
is a Freelance consultant and curator of education, adjunct professor at the University of Redlands (USA). Initially a facilitator at Hartheim Castle, he later served as a team member and later co-head of education at the Mauthausen Memorial. He has co-curated and led projects focusing on participant-centered learning at Flossenbürg Memorial, Max-Mannheimer Study Center Dachau, and Hartheim Castle and currently works as an educational consultant for the USHMM traveling exhibition „Einige waren Nachbarn/Some Were Neighbors“ in Germany.
Karin Schneider (AT)
Karin Schneider is a contemporary historian and gallery educator. Since 2019 she is the head of education at the Museums of the City of Linz (Lentos art museum and Nordico city museum). 2007-2019 she worked in different research projects to develop art based methods in politics of history in memory, contentious cultural heritages and education e.g. MemScreen and conserved memories at the academy of fine arts vienna; „TRACES – transmitting contentious cultural heritages with the arts“ and „Intertwining Hi/Stories of arts education“ at the Institute for Art Education, Zurich University of the Arts. 2001-2007 she held the staff position for arts education at the museum of modern art, mumok, Vienna.
Johannes Glack (AT)
is a contemporary historian and educator. Since 2016 he worked in different projects related to shoah-education and memorial work in Austria. Since 2019 he is working as a researcher for Yad Vashem Archives in different archives in Vienna.