XClose

Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS)

Home
Menu

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

23 November 2017

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Perpetration, Complicity, and Collaboration in Nazi-dominated Europe

We are delighted to announce an AHRC award of £940k 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 (IAS) for a major research project which will be housed in the IAS, 'Compromised Identities? Reflections on perpetration and complicity under Nazism'.

The project will sit in the UCL Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, one of the Institute of Advanced Studies' research centres. 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."