Research Fellow, Collective Violence,Holocaust & Genocide Studs

The Post-doctoral Research Fellow will develop and conduct research within the context of a collaborative research project on ‘Good Citizens, Terrible Times: Community, Courage and Compliance in and beyond the Holocaust’, funded by the AHRC and the DFG. The post is funded for six months half-time, to end on 31 December 2025. Interviews will be carried out (online) in the week beginning 28 April 2025 and the person appointed will start on 1 July 2025 (six months half time, although there may be some flexibility around details). The Research Fellow will carry out and/or finalize an already ongoing discrete research project that will form part of and make a significant contribution to a wider, collaborative research project on conceptions and practices of citizenship and community in different areas of Europe during the Holocaust and/or its aftermath, as these variously affected compliance with state or occupation policies, or inspired sympathy with tho se who were persecuted. Preference may be given to proposals for systematic comparative work combined with in-depth regional or micro-historical approaches to the Holocaust in different areas of central, eastern and south-eastern Europe; but projects focussing on aspects of memory studies, or on other areas of Europe, are also welcome. The Research Fellow will also participate in and pro-actively contribute to the activities of the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS).

Candidates will be expected to have expertise in 20th-century European history, with particular reference to one or more areas of Europe during the Nazi era. Preference may be given to candidates with experience of comparative work and/or expertise in micro-histories of the Holocaust in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe, but research proposals on any area of Europe will be considered. They should have a PhD in a relevant subject area (NB the thesis must have been successfully passed and award of PhD confirmed in principle by no later than 30 January 2025) and theoretical expertise and knowledge relevant to analysis of material concerning perpetration, victimhood, and bystanding, and processes of historical discrimination, citizenship, and persecution in the Holocaust. They should also have experience of working in a research environment.

The UCL Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the processes, character and implications of collective violence, past and present. In addition to historical analyses of major incidents of collective violence - notably the Holocaust and other aspects of Nazi persecution, as well as genocides and other eruptions of violence across the world - we seek to make significant analytic contributions to understanding collective violence in political, cultural, geographic and social context, exploring also what follows in the wake of such violence. Previous notable projects have included the AHRC-funded project ‘Compromised Identities? Reflections on Perpetration and Complicity under Nazism’ and the related online exhibition, https://compromised-identities.org/, which was funded by the AHRC and Pears Foundation, as well as the (ongoing) Balzan-Bystanding Project ‘Bystanding in the Holocaust. Ex periences, Ramifications, Representations, 1933 to the present’ at the Chair for Contemporary History at Bielefeld University.

The IAS is a research-based community of scholars comprising UCL colleagues and UK and international visiting fellows. It is committed to critical thinking and engaged enquiry within and across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, and aims to provide a creative and generative context in which to question habitual practices and modes of thought.

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