News at the HVC

The Nineteenth Hugo Valentin-Lecture will be given by Professor Renée Poznanski on 25 January, in the Main University building, room IV, at 5.15 PM.

It is our great pleasure to announce that our colleagues Hongye Bai and Santiago López Rodríguez have received research grants from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for their respective projects ‘Improvisation and hope in the face of assimilation: Mongolian identities in a changing China’ and ‘Witnessing the Holocaust: Spain and Portugal during the Second World War’.

Recent years have seen an increase in public debates and controversies concerning the Jasenovac camp complex, built in August 1941 after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). On 15–17 December a group of international scholars will revisit the history and memory of the camp in Belgrade, Jasenovac and Zagreb on an online conference that is open to the public.

It is with great joy and pride that we can announce that our long-standing collaborator in the research field "minority studies", Carl Henrik Carlsson, has been nominated for this year's August Prize in the category "Swedish non-fiction book of the year" for the monograph The History of the Jews in Sweden. The Prize is one of the highest literary awards in Sweden.

This year's Hugo Valentin Lecture has the title "Unaccompanied Children: The Child Search Branch of the International Tracing Service, 1945–1950" and will be held by Dan Stone, Professor of modern history and director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London. 

Constanze Ackermann-Boström is awarded the Westinska prize of 30,000 SEK by the Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala. She is awarded the prize for her doctoral thesis, which she wrote and defended at the Department of Modern Languages.

Analysing three cases of British colonial violence that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century, Michelle Gordon's Extreme Violence and the ‘British Way’: Colonial Warfare in Perak, Sierra Leone and Sudan argues that all three share commonalities, including the role of racial prejudices in justifying the perpetration of extreme colonial violence. 

The HVC is co-organising the conference, 'Colonial Paradigms of Violence: Comparative Analysis of the Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Killing', together with the Center for Holocaust Studies, Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) to be held on 11-13 November 2020. This conference will address the recent contributions and challenges of considering the Holocaust from a colonial perspective. Such an approach includes considering European colonialism from a genocide perspective, as well as examining the practices of violence from European colonialism and how these may have fed back into Europe throughout World War II.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Dan Stone of Royal Holloway, University of London, has accepted to give the XVIIIth Annual Lecture in Honour of Hugo Valentin.

The second convention of ComFas (International Association for Comparative Fascist Studies) reached its successful completion this Friday. During three days, over sixty participants discussed various aspects of the relationship between fascism and violence on 18 panels and two plenary sessions.

Tomislav Dulić, Senior Lecturer in History and Director of the Hugo Valentin Centre, has been awarded the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award 2019.

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The Hugo Valentin Centre warmly welcomes new guest researcher, Dr. Nika Potinkara. Dr. Potinkara has research expertise in ethnic categorisation processes. Her dissertation, ‘Etnisyyden rakentuminen kahden saamelaismuseon perusnäyttelyissä’ (The Construction of Ethnicity in the Permanent Exhibitions of Two Sámi Museums), examines the ways in which ethnic categories and boundaries are created by museum exhibitions.

Recent political developments have challenged the self-perception of the EU as a union of states sharing a set of universal democratic values opposed to a history plagued by totalitarianism, political repression and genocide. This is particularly evident in the Western Balkans, where intense controversy over the Second World War and its aftermath have affected social and inter-ethnic, as well as diplomatic relations.

Postdoctoral Project on Subaltern Perspectives on Romani in Sweden
The Hugo Valentin Centre warmly welcomes new postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Theresa Johnsson.
  
Her work focuses on questions about class, social, economic and legal inequality between people and how these variables could shape people's lives, c. 1780-1850. A consequence of this is a methodological interest in accessing an often difficult-to-access history of everyday life that also includes poor people.

Postdoctoral Project on European Warfare and Extreme Violence. The Hugo Valentin Centre warmly welcomes new postdoctoral fellow Dr. Michelle Gordon. 

Dr. Gordon has specific research and teaching expertise in studies of genocide and mass violence. Her doctoral thesis, British Colonial Violence in Perak, Sierra Leone and the Sudan, examines British colonial violence as a part of a longer tradition of European colonial violence and within a framework of extreme violence and mass killing.

Postdoctoral Project on the Role of Couriers in Spreading Awareness of Mass Murder during World War II. 

The Hugo Valentin Centre warmly welcomes new postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Sylwia Szymańska-Smolkin. Dr. Szymańska-Smolkin has research and teaching expertise in the history of the Holocaust and Eastern European Jewry. Her dissertation, "Fateful Decisions: The Polish Policemen and the Jewish Population of Occupied Poland, 1939-1945", examines the complicity of Polish policemen in the Holocaust in occupied Poland.

The Hugo Valentin Centre organizes “Stitched Voices,” an exhibition of textile arts about political violence and resistance.  The exhibition is co-organized with Fredens Hus, Conflict Textiles, the Conflict and Method research node, and Aberystwyth University.

Our colleague Goran Miljan recently published a book on the youth movement in the Independent state of Croatia, which was run by the fascist Ustasha organisation during 1941-45. 

Knowledge about violent conflict and international intervention is political. It involves power struggles over the objects of knowing (problematization/silencing), how they are known (epistemic practices), and what interpretations are taken into account in policymaking and implementation. This topic is explored in a recently published edited volume by Berit Bliesemann de Guevara and HVCs Roland Kostić, carrying the title Knowledge and Expertise in International Interventions: The Politics of Facts, Truth and Authenticity (Routledge).

The 2018 issue of our journal Multiethnica is dedicated to Nordic Romani studies, an expansive multidisciplinary research area that has seen a number of new perspectives and projects during recent years. Deadline for article submissions is 3 April.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Stathis N. Kalyvas of Yale University will be delivering the XVIth Annual Lecture in Honour of Hugo Valentin. 

Historian Jim W. Porter recently took up his position as a post-doctoral research fellow at the HVC. Dr. Porter received his PhD at Michigan State University in the history of science for a doctoral thesis that examined the efforts of an influential network of scientists, politicians and educational policymakers to implement more systematic testing and ability grouping in US public schools in the mid-1950s.

On 1 August, Dr. Pontus Rudberg took up a position as post-doctoral research fellow at the Hugo Valentin Centre. His research has mainly been concerned with modern Jewish and Holocaust history and his doctoral thesis examined how Jews in neutral Sweden reacted to the predicament of European Jewry in the Nazi era. 

We are happy to announce that Dr. Robert Borges, a linguist with specialization in sociolinguistics and contact-induced language change, has taken up his position as post-doctoral research fellow. 

The HVC is co-organizing a conference on Indigenous policy, which will be held in Sapporo, Japan on 2 – 4 December 1017. The conference will be preceded by a workshop and art exhibition taking place 30 November – 1 December 2017.

We are advertising a two-year position as senior lecturer in Holocaust and genocide studies, which we hope to fill as soon as possible.

The HVC is recruiting three postdocs. Two are in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies and one in minority studies. For more information and access to the online registration system, follow the links below.

We are happy to announce that we have received a new associate in Dr. Holly Guthrey, who is a peace and conflict researcher with specialization in reconciliation and transitional justice.

Kate Lonergan is a new PhD Candidate with the Hugo Valentin Centre and the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University. Her research focuses on reconciliation and peacebuilding after mass violence and atrocities. 

The Hugo Valentin Centre is announcing two postoc positions with 1 March 2017 as application deadline.

Lior Becker took up his position as PhD candidate on 1 January. He is most welcome to our Centre!

We are happy to announce that our new senior lecturer, Christian Gudehus, took up his position on 1 January. Welcome to our Centre!

The Hugo Valentin Lecture 2017 with Christopher R. Browning will take place in Uppsala on Thursday 16 March 2017.

HVC will co-finance a PhD position with the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University. The position is a doctoral education with specialisation in the field of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The doctoral student will be part of a cooperation between the Hugo Valentin Centre and the Department of Peace and Conflict Research.

We are very pleased to announce that Christopher Browning has agreed to honour Uppsala University and the HVC by delivering the XVth Annual Lecture to the memory of Hugo Valentin.

Historian Ida Ohlsson Al Fakir began her postdoc employment at HVC on September 1st

It is our pleasure to announce that professor Constantin Iordachi from the Central European University in Budapest is visiting the HVC during August and September 2016. Professor Iordachi is a historian and specialist in Central and East European political history and political extremism, and has published extensively on the subject.