Groundbreaking research efforts by Katie Ritchie and Dr. Anne Knowles

Ritchie stood infront of a chalkboard with Holocaust research initiatives written. Photo courtesy of Ritchie.

Katie Ritchie is a fourth-year student of history and education. She is a research assistant who does data entry on the Holocaust for Dr. Anne Knowles, a prominent historical geographer and professor at the University of Maine. 

Ritchie contributes to Knowles’ larger project, which started in 2007 at Middlebury College, by reading written accounts from WWII. She then uses that information to find geographic coordinates which pinpoint the precise location of concentration camps that were once active. 

“The most rewarding part of my job has been the opportunity to dip my feet into academic history,” Ritchie said.

She started at UMaine as a secondary education major, then decided to expand her studies to history halfway through. She intends to pursue a masters degree and teach at a collegiate level. It was nearly two years ago that Richie was offered a position with Knowles. 

One of the main benefits of her job is that it is fully remote. She is able to choose her schedule and is currently contracted to work five hours each week. That number depends on the amount of funding received by Knowles and has also been between 10 and 20 hours. Data entry can be completed anywhere at any time of day. 

Knowles’ project is called “Placing the Holocaust” and has been ongoing for over a decade. The wider objective is to create a database about camps and ghettos using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). By establishing a map that people can interact with, certain details can be accessed by anyone interested in the subject. 

“Say you want to find camps that were open from 1941 to 1945 that had only women in them. You can type that into this database and it’ll pop up. The work that I’ve been doing is going in and getting the data and entering it so when somebody wants to find it, it’s all right there,” said Ritchie. 

“Placing the Holocaust” also makes direct contributions to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with its beta version of their database. Recently, a workshop in Prague allowed researchers to share new discoveries relating to this line of work. 

Richie also shared that it is important to be objective because focusing on tragedies can take a toll on one’s mental health. She explained that as a sensitive person, one way for her to devote time to “emotionally overwhelming” work is by avoiding consumption of Holocaust media. 

“I remember when Ukraine was first happening, we were all kind of sitting there trying to figure out how to register all of it, while also studying the Holocaust and hearing and seeing the things that people are saying was really difficult,” Ritchie said.

Luckily, the flexibility of her job allows Ritchie to take two or three week breaks when necessary. She is able to step away and register some of the information before coming back to it. She also feels that her efforts are compensated fairly, as the hourly rate is more than minimum wage.

“I am just so grateful to get paid at all for it. I know professors who are working on this project, doing data entry for free because it’s fun for them. So, I’m grateful that I am getting paid for it and I am just so happy to be a part of it,” said Ritchie. 

She is also working on an exciting fellowship project. Ritchie received scholarship funding to create physical, woodcut maps using data from “Placing the Holocaust.” Every history student studies history. Ritchie, through her employment with Knowles, is actually contributing to it by helping establish a database that will be referenced for years to come. 

An early map created by Knowles can be accessed here.