The 2026 conference is only the beginning of this direction.
Prague will bring together people and organizations that preserve the experience and memory of war in very different ways.
Some work with living veterans and families.
Some preserve oral histories.
Some study health or environmental consequences.
Others maintain archives, museums, cemeteries, memorials, battlefield landscapes, historical collections, or traditions connected with wars whose direct witnesses disappeared generations ago.
These activities may appear very different.
But they share one fundamental problem:
how to preserve the human record of war before important parts of it disappear.
From living memory to historical memory
Every war passes through a gradual transformation.
At first, large numbers of people remember it directly.
Later, memory is increasingly carried by families and communities.
Documents and oral histories become more important.
Eventually, direct witnesses disappear.
The human record then depends increasingly on archives, museums, historical scholarship, monuments, cemeteries, battlefield landscapes, local traditions, and organizations committed to preservation.
This transition can be described simply:
living memory → inherited memory → documented memory → institutional memory → historical memory
Human Experience of War is intended to study and support this entire process.
Beyond one conflict
This direction began partly through work connected with Vietnam veterans and the long-term consequences of Agent Orange.
That experience remains important.
But Human Experience of War is not a Vietnam War project and it is not exclusively a veterans’ initiative.
The larger subject extends across countries, generations, and historical periods.
Contemporary wars are relevant because important testimony can still be preserved directly.
Twentieth-century wars are relevant because living memory is rapidly disappearing.
Earlier wars are relevant because they allow us to examine what remains after direct human memory has vanished completely.
Napoleonic battlefields, First World War cemeteries, Second World War family archives, Vietnam veteran communities, and present-day experiences of war therefore represent very different historical situations — but all raise questions about preservation, transmission, loss, and interpretation.
The purpose is not to claim that these wars were equivalent.
We compare processes of memory and preservation, not wars themselves.
Multiple perspectives must remain visible
Different societies remember wars differently.
Former adversaries may preserve conflicting narratives.
Military memory may differ from civilian memory.
National commemorations may differ from family histories or local traditions.
Historical interpretation may change substantially over generations.
The project will not attempt to produce one universal narrative of war.
Its purpose is to preserve the plurality of evidence and perspectives while creating conditions for serious historical and interdisciplinary research.
What may develop after Prague
The exact form of this direction should remain open.
Future cooperation may include:● international working groups;● future conference sections;● oral-history initiatives;● cooperation between veteran and historical organizations;● archive and document-preservation projects;● museum and memorial cooperation;● battlefield and historical-landscape studies;● comparative studies of commemoration and memory;● research on the transition from living testimony to historical memory;● publications and edited collections;● digital archives and databases;● educational initiatives;● and cooperation between researchers, communities, museums, archives, and organizations preserving the memory of particular wars.
Not every initiative must involve every type of participant.
A veterans’ oral-history project may require one approach.
A battlefield preservation organization may require another.
A museum, family archive, or historical society may preserve completely different kinds of evidence.
The larger framework should allow these forms to coexist.
Why historical organizations matterHistorical societies, museums, memorial organizations, battlefield associations, archives, and local historical communities are not peripheral to this direction.
They often become the custodians of human experience after the original witnesses are gone.
They preserve names.
They preserve documents.
They preserve burial places.
They preserve landscapes.
They preserve local knowledge.
And sometimes they preserve questions that professional researchers have not yet asked.
For wars that ended centuries ago, such organizations may be among the last institutions maintaining an active connection between historical events and the places and communities in which they occurred.
Their experience therefore has direct relevance to the larger question of how societies remember war over very long periods of time.
A long-term questionEvery generation inherits some record of earlier wars.
But every generation also loses something.
Documents disappear.
Memories become simplified.
Places are redeveloped.
Graves become unidentified.
Historical narratives change.
Languages and borders change.
Institutions disappear.
The central question therefore extends far beyond Prague 2026:
What must we preserve today so that people in the future can still understand the human experience of war?
For some conflicts, the answer begins with speaking to living witnesses.
For others, it means protecting documents, archives, cemeteries, memorials, collections, and historical landscapes.
These are different stages of the same long process.
Prague 2026 is intended to begin building an international community around that process.