People

Professor Robert Gildea, network lead for Transnational Resistance 1936-1948, is Professor of Modern History in the History Faculty, and Professorial Fellow at Worcester College, University of Oxford. His interests are in French and European history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has written on the impact of the German occupation in France and Europe during the Second World War and is currently working on French and European Resistance. He recently directed an international collaborative research project on 1968 in Europe based on the collection and analysis of oral testimony.

 

Dr Bojan Aleksov is Lecturer in Modern Southeast European History in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University College London. His principle research interest lies in what he believes to be the key issue in the modern history of the Balkans, namely the nexus of religion and nationalism, the two most powerful identitarian forces. He explores historical factors, causality and agency that led to the identification of confessional affiliation and national identity among almost all Balkan nations in the wake of the demise of two Empires (Ottoman and Habsburg), which ruled the region over centuries. Following on from his book Religious Dissent in the Age of Modernization and Nationalism (extended version in Serbian Nazareni među Srbima) that dealt with the key period when the confessional/national symbiosis was cemented, in a range of other articles he has looked at the manifestation and consequences of this development, looking at issues that range from the legacy of Enlightenment or discourse on Islamisation to more contemporary phenomena such as alleged Marian apparitions in Međugorje in Bosnia.

 

Dr Cristina Diac is a senior researcher within the National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism of the Romanian Academy. Since 2012, she collaborates with the Faculty of History, University of Bucharest, and the History of the Romanians and of the South-Eastern Europe Department, providing a course on the communist movement in interwar Romania. Her PhD thesis, published in 2014, addressed the Communist Party of Romania during Second World War. Between 2011 and 2013 she conducted research, funded by the Romanian National Council for Scientific Research, investigating the leaders of the CPoR from a prosopographical perspective. The main output was a database with one thousand entries (basic information about communist militants), extracted mostly from cadre files held the National Archives of Romania (www.ilegalisti.ro). Recently, she has published biographical studies on the most important leaders of the CPoR, based on documents identified within the Russian Archive for the Socio-Political History, Moscow, Russian Federation (RGASPI) and Romanian archives. She also contributed to the most recent Nicolae Ceaușescu’s biography.

 

Professeur Laurent Douzou is Professor of Contemporary History at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Lyon, Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). For the period 2012-17 he has been elected a Senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. In 2010-12 he was Visiting Professor at the Maison Française, Oxford. Between 1995 and 1999 he was Associate professor at the University Lumière Lyon 2. He was awarded his state doctorate in 1993 at the Univerity of Paris 1 for his thesis on ‘Le Mouvement de Résistance Libération-Sud (1940- 1944)’, with the highest possible accolade. Laurent Douzou is an internationally recognised historian of the French Resistance, and the history and memory of the Second World War. He is an expert on the historiography of Resistance and the Vichy regime, and has contributed to debates in the academy about the use of oral history sources.

 

Dr Yaacov Falkov, lecturer in history at Tel Aviv University, is an unrivalled expert on Jewish and Soviet resistance in the Russian borderlands. His PhD on The Use of Guerrilla Forces for the Intelligence Purposes of the Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941-1945, examined the intelligence work of Soviet Partisans in the German occupied territories of the USSR and Eastern Europe (Baltic States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania), and their relationships with local populace and resistance forces. His publications, which to date are in Hebrew, include, ‘To Set the Fascist’s Rear Ablaze: The Input of Guerrilla Warfare in the Soviet Military Effort, 1941-1945’, Maarachot, Vol. 446 (December 2012), pp. 57-63; ‘From Failure in June to Success in December: The Impact of Intelligence on Operation ‘Barbarossa’, Maarachot, Vol. 438 (August 2011), pp. 46-55; ‘Current Research on the Soviet Partisan Movement’, Zmanim. A Historical Quarterly, Vol. 116 (Autumn 2011), pp. 18-31; and ‘Jews as a Nation are Exterminated, as Everywhere Else’. The Murder of the USSR Jews as Reflected in Intelligence Reports Submitted by Soviet Partisans”, DAPIM: Studies on the Holocaust, The Institute for Research of the Holocaust, University of Haifa and The Ghetto Fighters House, Vol. 22 (2008), pp. 239-264. Dr Falkov is fluent in English, Russian, German, Latvian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Polish, Slovakian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. He has an expert knowledge of the archival system of the former Soviet Union and Israel. He will contribute expertise on the emergence and development of Jewish resistance in the Russian borderlands and its often difficult links to non-Jewish resistance.

 

Dr Diego Gaspar is Researcher at Modern & Contemporary History Department, University of Zaragoza, Spain and Associated Researcher at Fondation de la Résistance, Paris, France. Dr. Gaspar is a seasoned scholar having dedicated his solid PhD dissertation to a very interesting project that crucially explores the links and continuities between the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the Second World War. More specifically, Gaspar’s dissertation deals with the Spanish exiles who, having left Franco’s Spain after the Civil War, joined the French Free forces (Forces Françaises Libres, FFL) commanded by De Gaulle, and fought as “transnational freedom fighters” in Africa and Europe against Axis forces. From 2008 to 2012 he has worked intensively at the French Defense Department Archives consulting the personal records of the Spanish enlisted volunteers in the FFL. In this period he has completed different researches stays too. At École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France (2008-2010), at Duke University, North Carolina, USA (2012). On February 2014 Diego Gaspar obtained his Ph.D in History with the thesis: “The war continued. Spanish volunteers to the Free France service”, published on November 2015 by the prestigious Spanish publisher “Marcial Pons”. Member of several research projects in France and Spain, Diego Gaspar is author of several exhibitions dedicated to the Spanish exile, and currently focuses his efforts on the comparative analysis of foreign participation in the French Resistance, paying particular attention to foreigners. In fact, Americans participation in the French Resistance has focused the post-doc research period that Dr. Gaspar had spent, as a research fellow, at Remarque Institute (New York University) from 2014 to January 2015.

 

Professor Robert Gerwarth is Professor of Modern History at University College Dublin (UCD) and Director of the Centre for War Studies. He also serves as Vice-Principal for Global Engagement in the College of Arts and Humanities. After studying history and political science in Berlin, he completed his DPhil and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oxford University. Prof. Gerwarth has also held research fellowships or visiting professorships at Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Sciences Po Paris. In 2013-14 he was an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Fellow at the Herder Institute and a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute.

 

Dr Jorge Marco is a lecturer in Spanish Politics, History and Society in the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath. His research interests are in violence and memory war in the twentieth century. He completed his PhD on the Spanish Guerrilla Movement against Franco in 2011. Prior to working at Bath, he was a lecturer in Modern History in the Department of Modern History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. His current projects include Mapa de la memoria histórica de Granada; Madrid en guerra: capital, ciudad, frente y retaguardia, 1936-1939; and Approche transnationale des résistances antifascistes en Europe du Sud (Espagne, France, Italie, Yougoslavie, Grèce) des années 1930 à la fin des années 1940. Recent publications include Guerrilleros and Neighbours in Arms: Identities and Cultures of Anti-fascist Resistance in Spain (Sussex Academic Press, 2016) and (with Gordim da Silveira, H. and Valim Mansan, J.) Violência e sociedade em ditaduras ibero-americanas no século XX Argentina, Brasil, Espanha e Portugal (Editora Universitária da Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, 2015).

 

Dr Zdenko Maršálek, Institute for Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, is an expert on the military history of Czechoslovakia and the countries of Central Europe in the years 1918-1945, and on issues of national and ethnic identity and self-identification in Czechoslovakia in the years 1918-1950. Maršálek will contribute a study to the project on Czechoslovak members of the International Brigades, and will also work on ways in which regular soldiers interacted with resistance groups, using the case study of the members of Czechoslovak army who fought and were defeated in France in 1940. Recent publications include ‘Czechoslovak foreign army 1939-1945 and marginalization in the process of collective memory’. In: B. Soukupová, H. Nosková and P. Bednarik: Memory, people, minorities, marginalization, identity I. Urban studies sixth in Prague, Faculty of Humanities, UK, 2013, pp. 41-48; Aus dem Blickwinkel einer Schießscharte oder aus der Perspektive der “großen Strategie“ betrachtet? Ein polemischer Blick auf die Problematik der militärischen Verteidigung der Tschechoslowakei im September 1938. In: J. Zaruski and Zückert M. (eds.): Das Münchener Abkommen von 1938 in europäischer Perspektive. Munich, Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013, pp. 117-144.

 

Srđan Milošević is a researcher in the Institute for Recent History (IRH), Serbia, Belgrade. His major fields of research are: social and economic history of Yugoslavia, historical anthropology, legal history and problems of historical revisionism related to WWII in Yugoslavia and Europe. He is particularly interested in the current WWII revisionist narratives in former Yugoslavia, both in historiography and in the public discourse. He is the author of the book Istorija pred sudom. Interpretacija prošlosti i pravni aspekti u rehabilitaciji kneza Pavla Karađorđevića / History Before the Court. Interpretation of History and Legal Aspects in the Prince Paul’s Judicial Rehabilitation (2013).

 

Professor Olga Manojlović Pintar is a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Recent History (IRH), Belgrade. She is one of the leading experts in Serbia on the questions of war, resistance, anti-fascist struggle commemoration and the collective identities in Serbia and the Balkans in the 20th century. She has been involved in numerous national and international projects including Re-Visualizing the Recent Past: Museums of Communism and Recent History in Post-Communist Eastern Europe, Central European University and Open Society Archives, Budapest (2011–2012); European national museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen (EUNAMUS), EU FP Grant Agreement, Seventh Framework Programme, Linköping University (2010-2012).

 

Dr Milovan Pisarri, Researcher and the co-founder of the Centre for Holocaust Research and Education, Belgrade; Institute for Recent History (IRH), Serbia. Dr Pisarri works on crimes against civilians in Serbia and Macedonia; policies towards civilians in times of war in Europe in the twentieth century; the Holocaust; the genocide of the Roma; and anti-fascism in Italy and Yugoslavia. He has published numerous scientific articles in Serbia and abroad. These include “Resistance and places of suffering of civilian population in the city of Belgrade during the Second World War” (Mesta stradanja i antifašističke borbe u Beogradu 1941-1942. Priručnik za čitanje grada) and The Suffering of the Roma in Serbia during the Holocaust. He actively collaborates on international projects, including currently “Killing Sites – First Stage of Holocaust in Serbia and Croatia” (IHRA and Ministry of Culture, Serbia); “Escalating into Holocaust – From execution squads to the gas van of Sajmište – Two defining phases of the Holocaust in Serbia” (EU project under the “Europe for Citizens” Programme Strand 1- European Remembrance, also supported by the Ministry of Culture, Serbia); “L’Italia e la deportazione degli ebrei nei territori occupati durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale: 1939-1945” (EU project under the “Europe for Citizens” Programme Strand 1- European Remembrance). In October 2015, he was awarded “Vittorio Veneto dalla Vittoria alla Pace” Prize for his PhD thesis on the War crimes of the Occupiers in WWI in Serbia.

 

Renée Poznanski is the Yaakov and Poria Avnon Professor of Holocaust Studies in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University – a department she has created and headed for several years. She has published extensively on Jews in France during World War II: her research examines their daily lives, relations between Jews and non-Jews, Rescue and Resistance of the Jews and the impact of memory on the historiography of this period. Her book The Jews in France during the World War II, (University Press of New England, 2001; published originally in French) has been awarded the Jacob Buchman Prize for the Memory of the Holocaust. Her book on The Propaganda of the Resistance and the Persecution of the Jews (in French, Fayard, 2008; forthcoming in Hebrew) has been awarded the 2009 Henri Hertz prize by the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris. She has been a fellow at The Remarque Institute (NYU), the Center for Advanced Studies (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, DC), Sciences Po (Paris), the EH ESS (Paris) and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (Harvard University). Her last book (with Denis Peschanski) focuses on the Drancy internment camp (Drancy, un camp en France, Paris: Fayard). She is presently writing a book on the Resistance of the Jews in France during the Second World War.

 

Dr Vit Smetana is Lecturer in the Institute for Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He has worked on international issues and exiles and his research interests focus on the history of international politics and diplomacy during the 2nd World War and in the first phase of the Cold War; Czechoslovakia and the Powers 1938-1948; and British foreign policy in the 20th century and the Anglo-Czechoslovak relations. As part of this network, he will study transnational transfers between Czechoslovak exiles in London who overcame previous narrow nationalisms in an international community. He will focus on those who joined special forces such as SOE, assembled transnational parties that were sent into the field and worked with resistance movements on the ground.

 

Prof. dr. Ismee Tames is Director of Research and Senior Researcher at the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), Amsterdam. Since July 2015, she has also been endowed professor at the University of Utrecht. The Stichting 1940-1945 (Foundation 1940-1945), has established this special chair in collaboration with Utrecht University. Entitled Stichting 1940-1945: geschiedenis en betekenis van verzet tegen onderdrukking en vervolging (Foundation 1940-1945: history and meaning of resistance against oppression and prosecution). She is project leader of Very ordinary or quite special? New views on people in the resistance during the German occupation of the Netherlands 1940-1945 and prepares a new research program under the provisional title Liminal moments from peace to war.

 

Professor Mercedes Yusta Rodrigo is Professeure des Universités en Histoire Contemporaine de l’Espagne au Département d’Espagnol de l’Université Paris 8, Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). She is a leading scholar of the resistance to Franco in the period after 1939, focussing on continuing rural resistance and guerrilla warfare in north-east Spain, closest to the French border, and to the role of Spanish republicans in exile in France who contributed to the French resistance and endeavoured to liberate Spain in 1944. She is also a reknowned historian of gender issues with her Madres Coraje contra Franco. La Unión de Mujeres Españolas en Francia, del antifascismo a la Guerra Fría (1941- 1950), Madrid, Cátedra (col. « Feminismos »), 2009.

 

Dr Franziska Zaugg is a Gerda-Henkel-Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at UCD’s Centre for War Studies. She studied at the University of Bern and Fribourg (Switzerland) and is primarily interested in the history of World War II in Southeastern Europe and the commemoration of that conflict during and after the era of Tito and Enver Hoxha. In her PhD, Dr Zaugg analysed German and Italian occupation regimes in Albania as well as in the Kosovo and the Sandžak region. Her study explains the highly complex system of Nazi recruitment of Albanian Muslims into the Waffen-SS and the reaction of the local population. In her current postdoctoral project at UCD’s Centre for War Studies, Dr Zaugg expands her PhD work by concentrating on the cultural history of three different Waffen-SS divisions in Bosnia, Sandžak, Kosovo and Albania: the Handžar-, Kama- and Skanderbeg-Divisions.