Erica Lehrer, PhD

Erica Lehrer is a sociocultural anthropologist and curator, presently Professor in the History Department at Concordia. She is also Founding Director of the university's Curating and Public Scholarship Lab (CaPSL). From 2007-2017 she held the Canada Research Chair in Museum and Heritage Studies, and she currently directs the 7-year, $2.5 million international team project Thinking Through the Museum (TTTM): A Partnership Approach to Curating Difficult Knowledge in Public (2021-2028), funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Education

Monographs, edited volumes, special issues

Beyond Museum Walls: Museums and the Academy in Tension and Dialogue. Erica Lehrer (ed.), Jagiellonian / Columbia University Press (Exhibiting Theory series), Forthcoming, 2024.

“Awkward Objects, Curiosa and Varia: Exploring the Boundaries of the Holocaust Archive”. Erica Lehrer, Roma Sendyka, and Magdalena Waligórska (eds.), special issue of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Forthcoming, 2024.

Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions. Shelley Ruth Butler and Erica Lehrer (eds.) McGill-Queens Press, 2016.

Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland. Erica Lehrer and Michael Meng (eds.). Indiana University Press, 2015.

Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places. Indiana University Press (“New Anthropologies of Europe” series), 2013. (Finalist, National Jewish Book Award; Honorable Mention, Association of Jewish Studies Jordan Schnitzer Book Award).

Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places. Erica Lehrer, Cynthia Milton, and Monica Patterson (eds.). Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Selected Academic Articles and Chapters

"Do we need to decolonize museums of mass violence?" Afterword in Museums and Mass Violence: Perils and Potential. (eds.) Amy Sodaro, Paul Morrow, and Leora Kahn. Routledge. Forthcoming, 2025.

"Unpacking Righteousness: Material Legacies of Aid to Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland." Holocaust and Genocide Studies (special issue on "Awkward Objects, Curiosa and Varia: Exploring the Boundaries of the Holocaust Archive"). Forthcoming, 2024.

"Materialny krewny: wspólnoty uwikłania w postkolonialnych,

postholokaustowych polskich zbiorach etnograficznych". [Polish translation of

"Material Kin: 'Communities of implication' in post-colonial, post-Holocaust

Polish ethnographic collections"]. Prace Kulturoznawcze, Vol. 27, No. 4 ("Peasant Genealogies", ed. Jan Wasiewicz), 2024, pp. 159-190.

"Curatorial Activism: Museums, Memory, Change." Routledge Handbook of

Memory Activism. (Eds.) Yifat Gutman, Kerry Whigham, and Jenny Wüstenberg. London: Routledge, 2023, pp. 369-375.

"Decolonial Museology in East-Central Europe: A Preliminary To-Do List."

EuropeNow (Columbia University), with Joanna Wawrzyniak, 2023.

"Materiality and Holocaust Memory: Activating and Theorizing Poland’s Unquiet

Places." Jewish Quarterly Review. Forum on the state of the field of Eastern

European Jewish studies. Vol. 112, No. 2 (Spring 2022), pp. 239–244.

"Jewish Figurines and Holocaust Memory: A Meaning-Making Circuit in (and

beyond) the Polish People’s Republic." Diskursbuch Sprachlosigkeit (ed. by

Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden),

Leipzig: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2021, pp. 284-299.

"Material Kin: 'Communities of implication' in post-colonial, post-Holocaust Polish ethnographic collections." In (Eds.) Jonas Tinius and Margareta von Oswald, Across Anthropology: Convergences through Museums, Colonial Legacies, and the Curatorial. (Leuven University Press), 2020, pp. 283-316.

"Making space for Jewish culture in Polish 'folk' and 'ethnographic' museums:

Curating social diversity after ethnic cleansing."(with Monika Murzyn-Kupisz).

Museum Worlds: Advances in Research, special issue honoring Barbara

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2019, pp. 82-108.

"Arts of Witness or Awkward Objects? Vernacular art as a source base for

'bystander' Holocaust memory in Poland" (with Roma Sendyka). Special issue of Holocaust Studies: Disputed Holocaust Memory in Poland. (Eds.) Larry Ray and Sławomir Kapralski." Vol. 25, Issue 3, 2019, pp. 300-328.

"Can there be a Conciliatory Heritage?" International Journal of Heritage Studies. Vol. 16 (4-5), July-September, 2010, pp. 269-288. (Reprinted in S. Watson, A. Barnes, and K. Bunning (eds.) A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage. Leicester Readers in Museum Studies. Routledge: London and New York, 2018).

Exhibition Catalogs

Terribly Close: Polish Vernacular Artists Face the Holocaust. With Roma Sendyka, Wojciech Wilczyk, Magdalena Zych. Warsaw: Kritika Polityczna, 2024. (e-book)

Widok zza bliska. Inne obrazy Zagłady. With Roma Sendyka, Wojciech Wilczyk, Magdalena Zych. Warsaw: Kritika Polityczna, 2023.

My Museum, a Museum about Me: Curatorial Dreams for the Kraków Ethnographic Museum. With Roma Sendyka. Kraków: Jagiellonian / Columbia University Press (Exhibiting Theory series), 2023.

Różnicowanie narodowego “my”: kuratorskie marzenia. With Roma Sendyka. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2019.

Lucky Jews / Na Szczęscie To Żyd. Ha!art Press, Krakow, 2014.

Museum and Exhibition Reviews

"Making #Heritage Great Again." Political Critique (politicalcritique.org). November 27, 2017.

"Curating Polish Folk." Political Critique (politicalcritique.org). November 18, 2016.

"Thinking Through the Canadian Museum for Human Rights." American Quarterly. Volume 67, Number 4. December 2015. Pgs. 1195-1216.

Translations

Difficult Questions in Polish-Jewish Dialogue: How Poles and Jews See Each Other: A Dialogue on Key Issues in Polish-Jewish Relations. Maciej Kozłowski, Andrzej Folwarczny, and Michał Bilewicz (eds.). Forum Dialogu Między Narodami, and American Jewish Committee. Warszawa: Jacek Santorski & Co Agencja Wydawnicza, 2006. (Translated from Polish to English).

• Rescue Memory Consortium (Poland) 2023-2025

• American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies (USA) 2017-present

• Memory Studies Association (Amsterdam) 2016-present

• Association for Jewish Studies (USA) 2015-2018

• Council of Museum Anthropology (USA) 2014-2020