Graduate Students

Advisor: Thomas Kühne

Bradford’s dissertation, Cloaked in Femininity: Women’s Participation in Racial Terror in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America, takes a feminist comparative approach to women as perpetrators of violence in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America. She centers her research around certain public settings and acts of violence, such as riots, lynchings, and pogroms. This is in contrast to previous studies that have focused on the careers or family life of women perpetrators.  Women’s involvement took many forms, with varying degrees of severity, but the responses to their choices and actions are crucial to understanding the complex relational dynamics between victims and perpetrators and, additionally, the ways in which these dynamics were compounded by gender.

Education:

• B.A., History & German Studies, Gettysburg College, 2018
• M.A., European History, Politics, and Society, Columbia University, 2020

Publications:

Fellowships:

• Conny Kristel Fellowship, European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI), 2023
• DAAD One-Year Grant For Doctoral Candidates, 2023-2024
• The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Graduate Research Award, 2023
• The Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) Research Grant, 2023
• The Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fund (2021-2023)
• The Albert M. Tapper Fellowship and the Ference and Ilona (Schulhoff) Czigler Research Award (2020-2021)

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Advisor: Debórah Dwork

Daan de Leeuw investigates the trajectories of Dutch Jewish slave laborers through the German concentration camp system for his dissertation The Geography of Slave Labor: Dutch Jews and the Third Reich, 1942-1945. The Nazis moved prisoners to places where the war industry needed them. Each relocation wreaked havoc as it shattered the networks and social structure that inmates created among themselves. De Leeuw follows 9 of the 103 trains that ran between the Netherlands and German concentration and death camps between July 1942 and September 1944. Drawing on survivor testimonies and administrative records, he analyzes Dutch Jews’ spatial experiences. De Leeuw applies Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and cartographic tools to visualize the paths of individuals and groups of deportees to study the plight of Jewish slave laborers, to understand their agency and powerlessness, and to scrutinize the German effort to win the war through the ruthless exploitation of prisoners. His doctoral project seeks to contribute to the knowledge on Jewish slave labor during WWII and to foster research on Holocaust geographies.

Education:

• B.A., History (Cum Laude), University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2011
• Research M.A. (MPhil equivalent), History (Cum Laude), University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2013

Publications:

• Mapping Jewish Slave Laborers’ Trajectories Through Concentration Camps” in: Henning Borggräfe and Akim Jah (eds.), Deportations in the Nazi Era: Sources and Research, Arolsen Research Series, Vol. 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022), pp. 363-384.  DOI: 10.1515/9783110746464-020
• ““In the Name of Humanity”: Nazi Doctors and Human Experiments in German Concentration Camps,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 34, 2 (Fall 2020) pp. 225-252. DOI: 10.1093/hgs/dcaa025
• “Het NIOD en de European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI). Een gezamenlijke reis,” (co-authored with Annelies van Nispen, Reto Speck, and Frank Uiterwaal) in: Hinke Piersma et al. (eds.), Oorlog in onderzoek. 75 jaar NIOD (Amsterdam: Boom, 2020) pp. 123-128.
• “Digital Methods in Holocaust Studies: The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure,” (co-authored with Mike Bryant, Michal Frankl, Ivelina Nikolova, and Vladimir Alexiev), 2018 IEEE 14th International Conference on e-Science Proceedings, (2018) pp. 58-66. DOI: 10.1109/eScience.2018.00021

Fellowships:

• Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies, Claims Conference, 2023-2024
• Junior Fellowship, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, 2023-2024
• Doctoral Grant, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, 2023-2024
• Graduate Student Research Grant, American Academy for Jewish Research, 2023-2024
• Association for Jewish Studies Conference Travel Grant, 2022
• Clark University Graduate Student Council Conference Travel Award,  2022
• Claims Conference Fellow (The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany) *, 2017-2022
• Ben and Zelda Cohen Fellowship, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2021 – 2022
• Conny Kristel Fellowship, European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI), 2021
• Junior Fellowship, Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ), 2021
• Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund Grant – Awarded to projects that contribute to Dutch culture and society, 2020
• Summer Research Fellowship for PhD Students, Yad Vashem, 2019

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Advisor: Debórah Dwork

Natalya Lazar’s dissertation Czernowitz Jews and the Holocaust explores Jewish life and the changing dynamics of interethnic and neighborly relations in the contested borderland city. Czernowitz fell to the Axis on 5 July 1941 and the Jewish population was caught in Romanian control until the Soviets returned in 1944. Czernowitz Jews and the Holocaust delineates how anti-Jewish policies implemented by the Romanian state in Czernowitz differed from those in other parts of country, and scrutinizes the impact of anti-Jewish measures on the relations between Jews and their gentile neighbors. Most particularly, it explores how Jews, individually and as a community, negotiated the deadly circumstances they faced. And how did local non-Jews react to the persecution and murder of their Jewish neighbors? Most important in light of the thousands of Jews who survived in the city, what factors shaped pre- and wartime attitudes towards Jews, and what prompted collaboration and rescue during the Holocaust years?

Education:

Publications:

Fellowships:

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Advisor: Taner Akçam

Grigoryan’s dissertation, The Socio-Political Situation in Van and Bitlis Provinces in 1912-1915 in the context of the Armenian Genocide, explores whether the regional problems and developments of events in the Van and Bitlis Provinces of the Ottoman Empire during this period had an impact on the final decision to carry out a genocide.  The dissertation project will concentrate primarily on interaction between representatives of the Armenian community, Kurdish actors, and the Ottoman state, in order to explore why and how violent escalation took place in Van and Bitlis within the context of the negotiations over the Armenian Reform Question involving the Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire. Grigoryan will likewise examine the intra-ethnic interplay between the main Armenian political actors, the Orthodox Church, and notables within the Ottoman Empire (both in the center and periphery), as well as abroad in order to scrutinize which group was more interested, to what extent the Armenian reforms was perceived as a pan-Armenian project. International dynamics as well as the interplay between the politics of the center and the periphery are also essential to understanding the transition to genocide.

Education:

• B.A., Yerevan State University, Department of Cultural Studies, 2008
• M.A., Yerevan State University, Department of Cultural Studies, 2010

Publications:

Fellowships:

• AGBU US graduate scholarship for 2021-2023
• Asbed B. Zakarian and Margaret M. Zakarian Research Award 2020-2021
• Richard Melik Simonian Charitable Trust Scholarship Fund, 2022

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Advisor: Thomas Kühne

Grudić is conducting a micro historical study of the Bosnian town Bosanski Novi, during the Bosnian war and genocide between 1992 and 1995. Her dissertation, Neighborliness and Neighborhood Violence in Bosanski Novi, draws on survivor testimonies and archival materials to document interethnic relations and tensions during the conflict. The interviews reveal that despite violence between neighbors of different ethnic groups, many Bosniak, Serb, and Croat neighbors remained friendly, and some nurtured these relationships throughout the war and after. In addition, the findings reveal that the ethnic identities of individual Serbs and non-Serbs were not necessarily fixed but were often negotiated on the interpersonal level. In other words, even if some Serbs considered Muslims and Croats as “ethnic others,” which they perceived as threatening, many often did not view their non-Serb neighbors as such, and continued protecting them, even when committing violence against other members of Bosniak or Croat ethnicities.

Education:

• B.A., Secondary Social Science Education, University of South Florida
• M.A., Political Science, American Public University

Publications:

Fellowships:

• Shirley and Ralph Rose Fellowship 2020 – 2022
• ASEEES (the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) Summer Dissertation Research Grant (2023 Summer)
• American Councils Title VIII Research Scholar Program Grant (2023-24)

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Advisor: Taner Akçam

Hayrapetyan researches Turkey’s post-genocidal period and the return of Armenian genocide survivors as a conflict resolution strategy in the process of Turkish nation-state formation. According to different calculations, approximately   250,000 Armenians who returned Turkey in the aftermath of Genocide. Her dissertation, The foundation of Turkish Republic and the problem of Armenian returnees; 1918-1938, will uncover the experiences of returnee and remainee Armenian population between 1918-1938 in the Republic of Turkey, the process related to the reestablishment and re-socialization of the Armenian community at both the individual and communal levels, and the role of ethnic and racial markers during the period of re-integration. This includes interactions with local and central actors, as well as the ways in which the Armenian community experienced religious, economic, educational, and legal modernization reforms under the Kemalist regime through the circles of mass violence, exclusion and a constant minoritization and marginalization policies. Her dissertation project will consider the implications of what it meant to be an Armenian Genocide survivor during the processes of nation state building, ringing from the transformative periods of the Ottoman Empire to the Nationalist Movement, and finally, the Republic of Turkey.

Education:

• B.A., Turkology, Yerevan State University, 2007
• M.A., Turkology, Yerevan State University, 2009

Publications:

Fellowships:

• Howard Fromson Fellowship, 2020-2021
• AGBU US graduate scholarship, 2021-2022
• Richard Melik Simonian Charitable Trust Scholarship, 2021-2022

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Advisor: Frances Tanzer

Lucky’s dissertation, Resistance with Words: The Jewish Telegraph Agency during the Holocaust, charts how the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) used their news agency and its more than 150 employees in bureaus around the world to spy on the Nazis and resist fascism on a global scale. News agencies like the JTA, Associated Press, and Reuters are powerful global companies that gather and supply information to newspapers, fundamentally shaping what news readers encounter. Outwardly, the JTA was the primary, and often only, news organization reporting on the annihilation of European Jewry during the Holocaust. Behind the scenes, JTA doubled as a global spy agency dedicated to resisting fascism. Studying their activities helps reveal the essential global role of Jewish news in the twentieth century while also suggesting new ways to explore the geography of Jewish diasporic networks. Lucky analyzes the intertwined histories of news and espionage, the connections between the press and the Holocaust, and the vulnerability of diasporic networks.

Education:

• B.A. Honours, History, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, 2018
• M.A., History, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 2021

Publications:

Fellowships:

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Award, 2022-2026

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Advisor: Debórah Dwork

Education:

Publications:

Fellowships:

• Tapper Fellow for Graduate Studies in Holocaust History, 2014-2017
• The Family Robert Weil Foundation, Dissertation Research Grand, 2017
• Yad Vashem Two-Week PhD Candidate Fellowship, July 2016
• Ralph and Shirley Rose Fellow, 2013-2014

Current Position:

• Director of Education, Holocaust Museum, Center for Tolerance and Education, Suffern NY

Advisor: Taner Akçam

Ohanian’s dissertation project, Reconfiguration of the Caucasus: Bolshevik-Kemalist Cooperation and the Armenian Genocide, 1917-1923, sheds light on the role that the Armenian Genocide played in the context of Bolshevik-Kemalist relations, analyzing how, or to what extent, the genocide influenced the respective actions of Turkish and Russian revolutionary forces – the Kemalists, and the Bolsheviks. The triangular relationship between Turkey, Russia, and the Caucasus reflects the effects of imperial decline and the rise of nationalistic ambition in the Great War’s aftermath. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks absorbed Transcaucasian states and defined the fate of territories, such as Nagorno-Karabakh, with equivocal consideration towards indigenous habitants. The entangled histories of the Bolsheviks and Kemalists in the region may have influenced such outcomes whose consequences are manifested via continued inter-ethnic conflict and instability of the region today. The violence and bloodshed that ensued considerably marked the South Caucasus. To date, there are no theories that link the Bolshevik-Kemalist alliance to specific crimes of genocide. An historical analysis employing a transnational perspective will reveal the continuity of violence and genocidal machinations against Armenians in the South Caucasus.

Education:  

• B.A., History, University of California, Irvine, 2013
• B.A., French, University of California, Irvine, 2013
• M.A., History & Literature, Columbia University, 2016
• M.A., History, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2017

Publications:

• “Armenian-Georgian Relations, 1918 to 1920.” NYPL Blog. New York Public Library. February 1, 2022. https://www.nypl.org/blog/2022/02/01/armenian-georgian-relations

Fellowships:

• Society of Armenian Studies Graduate Research Grant, 2022
• Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace, Middlebury College, 2021
• Armenian Community Fellow, Clark University, 2018 – 2021
• New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship, 2020
• Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Short-term Grant for Armenian Studies, 2018, 2022
• AGBU Graduate Student Scholarship, 2018, 2019, 2020
• Margrit and Nishan Atinizian Fellowship, 2017-2018

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