Alice Tofts completed an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award entitled ‘The photographs of families who fell victim to Nazi persecution: building a collection; interrogating its meaning’ (2017-23).
A partnership between IWM and the University of Nottingham, her project explores the role of photographs for survivors and second generation survivors in forming memories and meanings of pre-war and early post-war life.
By exploring family photographs within oral history interviews, her research investigates how these photographs were imbued with meaning upon production, use and dissemination; consequently understanding the relationship between oral traditions, photographs and memory within survivor families.
By analysing IWM’s collecting, archiving and displaying practices of these family photographs, her project also examines the relationship between private and public forms of storytelling.