Pasts Revisited: The Rise of Public History through Epistemological and Technological Transformations

Abstract

The rise of public history is the result of an unfolding technological-epistemological transformation. Gradual changes in media technologies, historiography, museology and museography until well into the 1970s can be considered as a pre-history of public history. During the last third of the twentieth century the rise of memory and related historiographical changes went hand in hand with an increased influence of analogue and digital media that impacted communication, documentation and preservation. Overall, it will be argued that the transformation of historiographical approaches, a focus on memory and the rise of participatory historical research were brought about through shifts in media technologies.