Major AHRC Grant Awarded for Research into Perpetration and Complicity under Nazism

European Institute Fellows Professor Mary Fulbrook and Professor Stephanie Bird, along with Dr Stefanie Rauch of the UCL Institute of Advance Studies, have been awarded funding for a major research project, 'Compromised Identities? Reflections on perpetration and complicity under Nazism'.

Congratulations to Professor Mary Fulbrook, Dean of Social & Historical Sciences (SHS), Professor Stephanie Bird, Director of the School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) and Dr Stefanie Rauch, Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), who have been awarded £940k for a major research project, 'Compromised Identities? Reflections on perpetration and complicity under Nazism'.

The project will sit in the UCL Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, in the IAS. It analyses how people became entangled in Nazi systems and practices, and how they responded to what later, under different circumstances, came to be seen as a 'compromised' past. It looks at ways in which people who were involved in or witnesses to Nazi crimes talked about, silenced, or variously negotiated accounts of their roles, how individual identities come under pressure when circumstances and value systems change, and how self-representations develop over time. It also explores how public discourses - political, cultural, journalistic and judicial - address state-sponsored violence and interrogate or contribute to exculpatory strategies at a personal level.

Speaking about the grant, Professor Stephanie Bird said: "We are delighted to have been awarded funding for this project. It will allow us to develop our interdisciplinary research and also enable us to develop a unique collection of filmed interviews with some 250 former perpetrators and witnesses of Third Reich crimes for research and educational purposes." 

Read more about the project on the Research Councils UK website.