The Hidden Galleries project, funded by the European Research Council (project no. 677355), and led by PI Dr James Kapaló, addressed a contested aspect of Europe’s common heritage, the problematic legacy of fascist and communist regimes and their secret police operations against religious groups. Between 2016-2021, the UCC-based team of researchers from Hungary, Romania, Moldova and Ukraine, produced a series of public exhibitions and web-based resources presenting the visual and material cultural traces of targeted communities enclosed in the archives, bringing these heretofore hidden aspects of the past to public attention and reconnecting communities with their stolen patrimony. 

The success and public profile of the exhibitions, which were staged in Hungary, Romania and Ireland, led to the signing of an intellectual property licence and subsequent IP disclosure, resulting in a collaboration with a publicly funded Museum in Romania, the Museum of the Horrors of Communism. This collaboration also unlocked €4000 funding from the museum for a Romanian-language volume to accompany the exhibitions which reached the July 2024 top-10 bestseller list with Humanitas, Romania’s leading academic publisher. In addition, this gave access to Romanian Ministry of Culture funding to mount the exhibition in high-profile venues including the National Library of Romania and at the Memorial Museum of the Romanian Revolution, Timisoara, for the 2023 European Capital of Culture celebrations. Ultimately, this collaboration enabled the project’s work to reach an audience of many thousands including the impacted religious communities, students, academics and the general public.    

In the post Cold War-era, when the communist and fascist pasts have become a battle ground in the search for historical truth and national memory, the engaged dimension of this project highlighted the consequences of state-sponsored repression and violence, whomever the target may be. A key aim of Hidden Galleries is to be open-ended, encouraging increasing numbers of scholars and communities to become involved in enlarging the Digital Archive and making the exhibitions and the revelations they reveal accessible to ever wider publics. This was the first licence of IP from the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences in UCC, and the key to success was unlocked by the support and expert advice provided by UCC Innovation.

This case study originally appeared in UCC's Innovation Impact Report for 2024, which can be read here .