Dr. Charlotte Schallié, Department of German and Slavic Studies (Project Lead)

Charlotte Schallié is a Professor and Chair of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria. Her teaching and research interests include post-1945 diasporic and transcultural writing/filmmaking, memory studies, Jewish identity in contemporary cultural discourse, and teaching and learning about the Holocaust. She is the co-editor of Under Swiss Protection: Jewish Eyewitness Accounts from Wartime Budapest (2017; (Hungarian translation: Kalligram, 2019; German translation: Limmat Verlag, 2020). Together with Helga Thorson and Andrea van Noord, she published After the Holocaust: Human Rights and Genocide Education in the Approaching Post-Witness Era (University of Regina Press, 2020).

Dr. J. Matthew Huculak, Head, Advanced Research Services & Digital Scholarship Librarian, University of Victoria Libraries

Dr. Matt Huculak holds a PhD in English Language & Literature and an MLIS with a concentration on archives and preservation. He is technical director and founding Managing Editor of Modernism/modernity’s Print Plus platform, which won the Association of American Publishers 2019 PROSE Awards for “Innovation in Publishing.” His research focuses on libraries & archives, 20th-century literature, book history, and periodicals. He has served as Editorial Assistant for the James Joyce Quarterly, project specialist on the National Endowment for the Humanities funded Modernist Journals Project. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2717-1112

Gillian Booth, Curator of Academic and Community Programs, University of Victoria Legacy Art Galleries

Gillian Booth is a professional art gallery educator and community programmer. With over 10 years’ experience working at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria on a variety of educational projects, Booth has spent the past 5 years successfully developing and delivering new programming with the University of Victoria Legacy Galleries as their Curator of Academic and Community Programs. Booth is interested in sustaining meaningful public engagement in museums and fostering collaborative learning spaces through exhibitions and programs that challenge societal norms and institutional power structures.

Randa El Khatib and the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab‘s Open Knowledge Program

Randa El Khatib is the Assistant Director (Open Knowledge Initiatives) of the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab and the Associate Director of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI). She is also a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include digital humanities, open scholarship, platform studies, and early modern studies. Randa is the Managing Editor of Early Modern Digital Review, and her research appears in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, and other scholarly venues. Further information can be found on randaelkhatib.com.

Janine Wulz, MA, Research Assistant

Janine Wulz is a pre-doctoral researcher,  studied Political Science, Public Management and Education in Vienna, Klagenfurt and Warsaw and is working on her dissertation on teacher education for Holocaust and Human Rights. She is a lecturer for German and Holocaust Studies at UVIC and UBC. Before her position in Canada, Janine worked as educational researcher and project manager, in Austrian and European committees and projects (as Erasmus +, Horizon 2020). Janine has more than 10 years of experience in non-formal youth, adult education, civic education, and organizational development and works as lecturer for gender and diversity and international expert on quality assurance in education.

Lise Pinkos, M. Ed., Manager, Education Programming

Lise Pinkos is a proud Franco-Manitoban and holds a Bachelors of Arts degree and a Master of Education degree, both from L’Université de Saint-Boniface. Her studies focused on human rights education and how students can learn about human rights to become engaged in taking action for human rights. Lise was part of the inaugural team at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and is currently the Manager of Education and Professional Programs. Throughout her career at the Museum, Lise has been privileged to have the opportunity to meet with Canadians from coast to coast to coast who generously shared their human rights stories with the Museum.  In her current role, she oversees the development and implementation of human rights education programs onsite and online for learners of all ages. Lise is the Vice President of the Board of Governors of the Université de Saint-Boniface.

Dr. Andrea Webb, Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy

Andrea Webb spent a decade as a classroom teacher and department head before returning to the University of British Columbia as a teacher educator. She is the Area Coordinator for Social Studies Education; teaching courses in elementary and secondary methodologies. Andrea was the curriculum developer for the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre Primary Voices website. Her research interests lie in teaching and learning in higher education and she is actively engaged in research related to social studies Teacher Education, Threshold Concepts, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Dr. Ilona Shulman Spaar, Education Director & Curator

Ilona Shulman Spaar, PhD, is the Education Director and Curator of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC). She is in charge of the centre’s school programming, educational resources and professional development events for teachers. Ilona is the curator of the museums’ original exhibitions Treasured Belongings: The Hahn Family & the Search for a Stolen Legacy (2019), In Focus: The Holocaust Through the VHEC Collection (2018) and Faces of Survival: Photographs by Marissa Roth (2018). Ilona has been engaged in museum education on a national and international level for nearly two decades.

Miriam Libicki, Graphic Novelist

Miriam Libicki is a graphic novelist living in Vancouver, Canada and Angoulême, France. Her book of drawn essays, TOWARD A HOT JEW was named a FORBES Top 10 graphic novel of 2016 and received the 2017 Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature. Her painted essay WHO GETS CALLED AN UNFIT MOTHER was nominated for a 2020 Best Short Story Eisner. Libicki teaches illustration at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and was the 2017 Writer in Residence at the Vancouver Public Library.

Dr. Akim Jah

Akim Jah is a Research Associate in the Research and Education Department of the Arolsen Archives. His research activities focus on the history and consequences of persecution under National Socialism, especially in Germany, as well as the history of Displaced Persons. He is also involved in archival pedagogical projects and regularly publishes on the aforementioned subjects. Akim Jah studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and did his doctorate there with a study on the deportation of Jews from Berlin in the years 1941–1945.

Dr. Stefanie Fischer, Associate Researcher

Stefanie Fischer is a Research Associate at the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Technical University Berlin, as well as at the Martin Buber Professorship for Philosophy of Judaism at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. She is currently working on two book projects. Together with Kim Wünschmann she explores the relationships between exiled German Jews and non-Jews in a rural setting. This work titled ‘Oberbrechen. A German Village Confronts its Nazi Past’. A Graphic History is under contract with Oxford University Press (2022). In her second monograph Fischer explores the relationships between the dead who were buried in Jewish graveyards in Europe and the surviving family members who found themselves scattered around the globe after the Holocaust. Her research interest is Jewish history, the history of trust and art-based research as well as Holocaust history. In 2012 Fischer earned a PhD from the Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University Berlin. Her first book on economic trust and antisemitic violence was jointly awarded the Fraenkel Prize for an outstanding work of contemporary history from the Wiener Library in London (2012) and received the Irma-Rosenberg Prize (2014).

Dr. Andrea Hopp, Fellow

Andrea Hopp (Dr. phil.) is a fellow at the Center for the Research on Anti-Semitism/Technical University Berlin. She has years of experience in writing on German and German-Jewish history and in practicing democracy education. Among her books are “Jüdisches Bürgertum in Frankfurt am Main im 19. Jahrhundert” (1997) and – together with Katja Gosdek – a graphic novel “Die Flüchtlingskonferenz von Évian” (2019). Based on the novel “The Mission” by Hans Habe (https://www.hentrichhentrich.de/buch-die-fluechtlingskonferenz-von-evian-1938.html), it has been a shared storytelling product of their educational program “Jewish History for Refugees”, a pilot project financed by the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Patricia Piberger, MA, Student Assistant

Patricia Piberger holds a M.A. in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Political Science and Indian Philology from Free University Berlin. She worked in civic education with the Berlin based NGO KIgA e.V. and taught in the Department of Education and Psychology at FU Berlin. Since 2014 she is affiliated with the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at Technical University Berlin, where she worked as a student assistant for the director and as a research assistant for the exhibition „Sticky Messages. Antisemitic and racist stickers from 1880 to the present“. Additionally, she organized workshops and a lecture series on critical race theory. Patricia is dedicated to interdisciplinary scholarship focusing on the intersections of antisemitism and other forms of racism. She mainly works on memory cultures, politics, and activism in Germany. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Research on Antisemitism.

Maja Sturm, Senior Teacher for Art, German, Drama; Lecturer

Maja Sturm works as a senior teacher (art/German literature) in Osnabrück. She is a coordinator of school development/educational quality development, director of a drama group, teaches human rights education and moderates advanced teacher trainings. She supports gifted and talented students with a special focus on intercultural aspects and has set up an annual student exchange with a school in the Netherlands. She organized a German-Israeli-student exchange, excursions to Poland and was a Fulbright scholarship holder in 2014 (“Diversity in US Education”), took part in two Certificate seminars „Holocaust and education“ at ISHS Yad Vashem and worked as a schoolbook author. She gives lectures on teaching and learning about the Holocaust, Graphic Novels/aesthetic approaches and has experience in international cooperation, institutional and thematic interfaces. Together with Christoph Sturm she offers experiences in the field of the development of didactic materials, from 2001 to 2006 they adapted the US-American tolerance education program “Hands Across the Campus for the American Jewish Committee.

Dr. Kees Ribbens, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies / Center for Historical Culture

Kees Ribbens PhD is a senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, and Endowed Professor of Popular Historical Culture of Global Conflicts and Mass Violence at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. As an historian, he is particularly interested in the history, memory and representations (in particular in comics and other visual media) of war and genocide in the 20^th and 21^st century, and in the role these phenomena play in popular culture.

Dr. Dienke Hondius, Associate Professor of History

Dr. Dienke Hondius is assistant professor of history at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and staff member of the Anne Frank House. She has published extensively in the broad field of Holocaust studies and anti-semitism on the one hand, and on race, racism and slavery studies on the other. Her most recent book is Blackness in Western Europe: Racial Patterns of Paternalism and Exclusion (2017). She initiated the Mapping Slavery research project at Vrije Universiteit in 2012 and co-authored three public history books about slavery heritage locations in Amsterdam, New York and the Netherlands. “Mapping Hiding Places” is her new research project, intended to build digital maps with information about locations where Jews have been in hiding during the Shoah, in the Netherlands and across Europe. Among her books are “Return: Holocaust Survivors and Dutch Anti-Semitism”.

Katarina Turler, Film Editor

Katarina Turler was born in Zürich (Switzerland) in 1968. In 1991 she moved to Amsterdam to study photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. 1997 she began her studies in film- and media at the University of Amsterdam, UvA , followed by the practical course filmmontage at the Film en TV Academie in Amsterdam. In 2003 Katarina opened her own editing-studio, working on documentaries and feature movies and art installations. She is interested in researching the inner life of humans and what stories, true or invented, can contribute to the insights of our life.

Dr. Arie Kizel, Head, Pedagogical Development of Educational Systems, Faculty of Education

Prof. Arie Kizel (PhD) is a faculty member of the faculty of education, University of Haifa, Israel. Since 2017 he is the president of The International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC). He is the founder of the Israeli Academic Forum of Philosophy with Children and a member of the advisory board of the UNESCO Chair, “Practice of Philosophy with Children.” His research areas are philosophy of education, philosophy with (and for) children, dialogical pedagogies, research of curriculum and textbooks and study of social groups’ narrative. He was the head of the Israeli-German commission for textbooks research (2010 – 2015). Among his publications: The books Subservient History: A Critical Analysis of History Curricula and Textbooks in Israel, 1948–2006, The New Mizrahi Narrative in Israel and dozens of academic articles on philosophy of education, philosophy with children and research of textbooks and curricula.

Gilad Seliktar, Graphic Novelist

Gilad Seliktar is a graphic novelist, writer, and illustrator. His works are published in Israel and throughout the world. Gilad wrote and illustrated the graphic novels “Tsav 8” (2014), “The Demons of Mongols” (2008) and “Who Are You Anyway” (2005). The Graphic Novel “Farm 54” (2009) written by Gilad Seliktar was part of the official selection at the Angouleme Festival, has been translated into five languages, and was included in the list of the 10 best graphic novels of the year by “publisher weekly”. In 2018 Gilad received a honorary mention at the Israel Museum Prize for the illustration of David Grosman’s book “berry baby”. Gilad is currently a lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, working on his next graphical novel and writing and illustrating his first children’s book. Gilad lives in Padres Hanna with his wife Adi and his son Yonatan.

Dr. Tim Cole, Professor of Social History and Director of Brigstow Institute

Tim is Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol and founding Director of the Brigstow Institute that brings academics from diverse disciplines together with communities, artists, charities and businesses to experiment in new ways of living and being in the 21st century. Tim is also the Chair of the We are Bristol History Commission set up in the city in the wake of the toppling of the Colston Statue. His research interests range across histories and geographies of the Holocaust and its memory, environmental histories and digital humanities and his most recent book is About Britain (Bloomsbury, 2021).

Dr. Alexander Korb, Associate Professor

Alexander Korb, Associate Professor in Modern European History, is a member of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester, and the Centre’s director from 2012 to 2018. Alex is a historian of the Holocaust and WWII in Eastern and Southeastern Europe with a focus on local forms of violence and collaboration. Other research projects include right-wing thinking the German Youth Movement, violence during the German revolution 1918-1920 and the history of journalism in Europe in the age of extremes. Alex has worked closely with survivors of the Holocaust and supported graphic novelist Barbara Yelin with her prize-winning book Irmina.

Dr. Fransiska Louwagie, Associate Professor in French Studies: School of Modern Languages

Dr Fransiska Louwagie is Associate Professor of French Studies in the School of Arts at the University of Leicester, where she is also affiliated with the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She is the author of Témoignage et littérature d’après Auschwitz (Brill, 2020) and has conducted extensive research on Holocaust testimony, second-generation literature, and the memory and representation of genocides in graphic novels and the visual arts. She is currently the PI of ‘Covid in cartoons’, an AHRC-funded project partnered by the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies, Shout Out UK and Cartooning for Peace (2021-2022).

Betsy Inlow, MA, Research Assistant

Betsy Inlow is a History PhD student within the University of Leicester’s Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She has a varied academic background including BA degrees in Anthropology and Classical Civilizations: Art and Archaeology from Indiana University and an MSc in Museum Studies from the University of Glasgow.  Her doctoral research is looking into the potential future roles of Holocaust graphic narratives within the museum sector. She is currently working as a research assistant for the Narrative Art and Visual Storytelling in Holocaust and Human Rights Education project.

Dr. Mark Celinscak, Louis & Frances Blumkin Professor of Holocaust & Genocide Studies; Executive Director, Sam & Frances Fried Holocaust & Genocide Academy Modern Europe, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, War and Culture Studies.

Mark Celinscak is the Louis and Frances Blumkin Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Executive Director of the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Academy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is a historian of twentieth century Britain and Europe, specializing in war, Holocaust, and genocide studies. He is the author of Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp, winner of the 2016 Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature. His follow-up book, Kingdom of Night: Witnesses to the Holocaust, will be published in fall 2021.