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Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe: The Role of Museums in a Digital 'Post-Truth' European Society

01/03/2022 to 31/03/2026

Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe: The Role of Museums in a Digital ‘Post-Truth’ European Society (CHAPTER) is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Through ethnographic research and digital innovation, it develops approaches and best practice examples to support museums in challenging the growing influence of populist discourse in Europe. The project is a collaboration of researchers in Berlin (project leader: Sharon Macdonald), Tübingen (project leader: Christoph Bareither) London (PI: Haidy Geismar) and Krakow (PI: Roma Sendyka) and museums in the respective countries. The advisory board has members from six European countries. The project will also cooperate with software developer Fluxguide in Vienna, with whom the team will develop and co-design a museum app together with young visitors from three European countries. The project brings together a broad range of anthropological fields, including digital and media anthropology, museum anthropology, political anthropology and the anthropology of emotions/affects. Based at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Ludwig Uhland Institute for Historical and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tübingen, together with the Jagiellonian University (JU) in Krakow and University College London (UCL), the project aims to develop a European perspective on how museums can challenge populist truth-making in contemporary digital societies.