The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies is pleased to recognize Diāna Popova for the successful completion of her AABS Aina Birnitis Dissertation-Completion Fellowship in the Humanities for Latvia, awarded in 2024, and associated completion of her doctorate in late 2025.
The Aina Birnitis Fellowship supports a year of research and writing to help advanced graduate students in the humanities in the last year of Ph.D. dissertation writing. The fellowship provides a $21,000 stipend for one year plus $1,000 for university fees.
Popova used the grant to support her doctoral dissertation project, “Interpreting Dark Heritage for Children and Youth in Museums.” She provided a report at the conclusion of her research, which we publish below with light editing.
Diāna Popova earned her PhD in Humanities and Arts from the Latvian Academy of Culture in 2025, with doctoral research on dark heritage and its interpretation for children and youth in Latvian museums. She holds degrees in social anthropology, Baltic Sea region studies, and communication science from the University of Latvia. Since 2020, Popova has worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia, contributing to national and international projects on dark heritage and tourism, tourism accessibility, and contemporary belief systems in Latvian society, and she has also participated in a research project on inclusive and sustainable creative economies at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. Popova is currently involved in the development of the forthcoming Children’s Museum at the Pauls Stradiņš Museum of the History of Medicine in Riga. Her professional background includes contemporary art and cultural event management at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, as well as museum practice gained through an internship at the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo. Popova is also one of the founding members of the creative collective “PPPMāksla” (Practical Research Platform “Art”).
Interpreting Dark Heritage for Children and Youth in Museums
Birnitis Fellowship Report from Diāna Popova
Background
When I began my doctoral studies in 2020, my academic interest was drawn to the phenomenon of dark heritage, a topic that remains relatively under-researched in international scholarship. Dark heritage sites, which bear witness to some of the most violent conflicts, human suffering, and death, are generally understood to serve two core functions – commemoration and education. However, dark heritage is widely perceived as an adult domain. Consequently, interpretation in memorials and museums dedicated to traumatic historical events is typically created by adults and primarily directed at adult audiences.
Nevertheless, researchers have pointed out that children and young people – particularly organized school groups – constitute a significant audience for such institutions. This presents dark heritage institutions with a substantial challenge – how to develop interpretation and content for younger visitors that foster empathy and interest in learning about difficult past without frightening them or provoking resistance to visiting such sites from the very first encounter.
In dark heritage contexts, children and young people are often invisible and unheard, their perspectives are rarely sought by either heritage institutions or researchers, and the interpretive practices and challenges faced by museum professionals working with this audience remain under-examined. This is largely due to the challenging and sensitive nature of both the topic and the research process itself. It was precisely this paradox that motivated me to explore these issues in greater depth. My doctoral dissertation, “Interpreting Dark Heritage for Children and Youth in Museums,” examines approaches, practices, and challenges of dark heritage interpretation in Holocaust-related museums in Latvia. The Holocaust is regarded as the largest and most systematic mass murder of civilians on the territory of Latvia in the twentieth century, and it lies at the darkest end of the dark heritage spectrum.
Research
Engaging in research on a topic that is both academically and emotionally demanding brought an additional layer of complexity to my doctoral journey. Along this path, external support and recognition of the relevance of my work were especially important. In my case, such support came not only from my supervisors and advisors, but also from AABS, whose positive evaluation of my fellowship application and subsequent award constituted a meaningful endorsement of my research. Completing a doctoral thesis is a time-intensive process, and the opportunity to work on my dissertation in a focused and sustained manner – particularly during its final and most demanding stage – was made possible through the generous support of the Aina Birnitis Fellowship, for which I am deeply grateful. This fellowship allowed me to dedicate the necessary time and energy to careful, concentrated work and to bring a substantial body of research to full completion. On 21 November 2025, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation and was awarded a PhD in Humanities and Arts by the Latvian Academy of Culture.
My doctoral research aimed to explore how Holocaust-related museums in Latvia interpret dark heritage for children and young people, with a focus on interpretive approaches and tools, the challenges faced by museums, and the behavior and reactions of young visitors during museum visits. The research was grounded in a theoretical framework encompassing dark heritage, dark tourism, the history of heritage interpretation, and interpretive tools and methods used in dark heritage contexts, with particular attention to scholarship addressing interpretation for children and youth audiences. The empirical component of the study consisted of fieldwork conducted in three museums: the Museum “Jews in Latvia,” the Žanis Lipke Memorial, and the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum. There, I carried out interviews with museum staff involved in educational work, conducted multiple participant observations during school group tours and implemented empathy-mapping activities with selected student groups in order to understand what they saw, heard, felt, and thought during their museum visits.
Findings
The findings indicate that museums’ capacity to engage children and young people is uneven and largely shaped by the diversity of interpretive formats and the extent of cooperation with schools. Beyond structured museum education programs, institutions employ a range of interpretive tools and engagement strategies to reach younger audiences, including artistic collaborations that result in new cultural products, such as theatre performances for children based on historical events, outreach programs and traveling exhibitions for schools, and participation in annual initiatives such as Museum Night. In recent years, museums have also begun to explore the potential of digital technologies as an emerging interpretive direction, although their application in dark heritage contexts remains cautious and shaped by ethical and pedagogical considerations. Overall, the national programme “Latvian School Bag” plays a crucial role in facilitating student visits, underscoring the continued importance of teachers as key gatekeepers in young people’s encounters with dark heritage.
The study also demonstrates that the interpretation of dark heritage for children and young people begins with the importance of prior preparation in schools, as the limited time available during museum visits can offer only a general insight into historical complexity and its consequences. Equally important is the flexibility of museum educators in adapting to different age groups and varying levels of overall knowledge and understanding of history. The most effective interpretive approaches are the ones based on personal stories and oriented towards fostering empathy, linking historical events to young people’s own experiences and contemporary contexts through dialogue, questions, and associative examples. Museums already offer significant locally grounded educational resources, while the gradual integration of new media and digital technologies is expanding interpretive possibilities.
Interpreting dark heritage for children and young people in museums involves a range of complex and interrelated challenges. The central dilemma lies in balancing the representation of the tragic reality of extreme violence and human suffering with the need to protect children from emotional harm and excessive shock. Additional challenges stem from differences in visitors’ age, knowledge levels, and emotional readiness, as well as from societal stereotypes, language-related issues, and the sensitive topic of local collaboration. Museums occasionally encounter challenging behavior among young visitors; however, direct provocations are rare. Another level of difficulty in interpreting the dark past arises when current sociopolitical events enter educational discussions. Limited human resources further complicate systematic evaluation of student experiences and the collection of feedback in museums. Overall, dark heritage interpretation for children and young people requires a high degree of professional sensitivity, diverse communication skills, and continuous negotiation between education, empathy-building, and emotional safety.
The study further shows that children’s and young people’s behavior and reactions in dark heritage museums are multi-layered and depend on individual motivation, preparation, age, and situational context. Observations suggest that while students generally adhere to unwritten behavioral norms, they are often passive, engage minimally in discussions, and at times disengage from content by using smartphones or displaying indifference – particularly in adolescent groups. At the same time, empathy-mapping results demonstrate that museum visits can evoke a wide spectrum of emotional responses, ranging from sadness and compassion to confusion or emotional distancing, as well as different sensory and bodily sensations that significantly shape the intensity of the experience. The research confirms that dark heritage museums can foster reflection, empathy, critical thinking, and moral self-assessment among young people; however, this potential is not always fully realized, particularly when prior preparation is lacking or when group dynamics and behavioral issues arise. Meaningful experiences for children and young people in dark heritage museums thus require purposeful mediation, close collaboration with teachers, and a deeper understanding of the factors shaping young audiences’ emotional, sensory, and cognitive responses.
The novelty of this research lies in its in-depth focus on a field that has remained largely unexplored. The study synthesizes internationally recognized authors’ theoretical frameworks with empirical observations from the Latvian context, shedding light on how dark heritage museums address complex ethical, emotional, and pedagogical challenges in practice. The research expands understanding of how younger generations develop attitudes toward traumatic historical events, which factors influence the development of empathy, reflection, and critical thinking, and how museums can serve as important platforms for engaging with socially sensitive topics in the future.
The findings of this study both inform future research on difficult and dark heritage and offer practical guidance for museum and memorial professionals. Future research should further examine the dynamics of the teacher–students–museum relationship, with particular attention to teachers’ roles as mediators, their pedagogical strategies for teaching difficult history, and their motivations for engaging with museums as educational spaces. Additional research is needed to better understand how emotional, social, and contextual factors influence young people’s varied responses to the same museum narratives. Equally important directions include involving young people more actively as collaborators in dark heritage research, applying longitudinal and experimental designs to trace changes in knowledge, attitudes, and emotions over time, and critically addressing the ethical implications of digital technologies – such as gaming, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and social media – in the interpretation of sensitive historical topics.
Further Work
Looking ahead, I plan to continue researching issues related to this field of inquiry. The support provided through the Aina Birnītis Fellowship enabled the successful completion of a rigorous and comprehensive doctoral dissertation. Building on this foundation, my next steps focus on developing peer-reviewed publications in international scientific journals that draw on this study’s findings, integrate the Latvian case into broader comparative and theoretical frameworks, and contribute to advancing scholarly debate in this still under-researched field.
– Diāna Popova, 2026
Diāna Popova