As of January 2023, Elia Di Fonzo is a PhD candidate at the Universities of Padova, Verona and Venice. He got his Bachelor in foreign languages and literatures at the University of Trento, and has continued his studies in History at the same university. He earned his MA with a thesis on the organisation of the Ordnungspolizei in occupied Italy. After a brief experience as translator from German into Italian, when he translated Longerich's biography of Hitler, he started his PhD path. He is developing a project that stems from his master thesis, researching the role of the Ordnungspolizei in the Italian Social Republic between September 1943 and May 1945.

His research is characterised by a multi-layered approach that aims at investigating the modus operandi of one of the central pillars of German repression in occupied Italy. On the one hand, he has focused on the personal composition of commands and units, assessing in particular the professional background of those officers serving in that theatre, as well as their criminal experiences. On the other, he has researched the dynamics of police cooperation between the Ordnungspolizei and the Italian security forces, drawing largely from Italian sources, which shed new light on aspects that do not emerge from the scattered German ones.

In Munich he will work on the problem of continuity between the Nazi and the Police forces of the Bundesrepublik, recurring to the Täterforschung as main methodological tool. He will analyse the post-war careers of a sample of officers and NCOs, taking into account denazification and the processes against them celebrated by the German Federal Republic. Among Elia's main research interests should be listed the History of the Nazi and Fascist Police forces, the dynamics of police cooperation between the two countries, processes of knowledge transfer in that field, as well as the Täterforschung, in particular when applied to a context of counter-insurgency warfare.

Nicole Toedtli is a PhD candidate at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Geneva and an M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial and the Arolsen Archives. For her dissertation, she studies actors who cannot be categorized clearly as either victims, perpetrators, bystanders, or rescuers, but fall into the gray zone between these categories. Her research examines the concept of the victim-perpetrator in a comparative meta-study in the context of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and the civil war in Sierra Leone.

Kathryn Sederberg is Lucinda Hinsdale Stone Assistant Professor of German Studies at Kalamazoo College (USA). Her main research areas include twentieth-century German culture, autobiography and memoir, war and gender, and National Socialism and its legacies. She has published on diaries and literature from the Second World War and the postwar period, including an article on hybrid “Brieftagebücher” (letter-diaries) at the war’s end, and on time and history in crisis diaries. As a fellow at the Center for Holocaust Studies, she will continue her study of refugee diaries: Writing Home: Emigration Diaries of German and Austrian Jews, 1933-1945. With a focus on the experience of German and Austrian Jewish refugees, this project analyzes the role of the diary as a site (space, practice) where the writing subject is shaped by processes of acculturation and explores new concepts of self, home, and belonging.

Andrii Kudriachenko, Professor für Zeitgeschichte am Institut für Weltgeschichte der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften der Ukraine. 1987 Promotion an der Fakultät für die Geschichte der Taras Schewtschenko Universität, Kiew. 1995 Habilitation in der Zeitgeschichte zum Thema “Europäische Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1970 - 1991)“.

1995-1998 wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter des Instituts für Weltwirtschaft und Internationalen Beziehungen der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften der Ukrainе. 1998-2000 Experte bei der Präsidentenverwaltung der Ukraine, Ministerium des auswärtigen Amtes der Ukraine. 1998-2000  Diplomat,  Gesandter der Botschaft der Ukraine in Deutschland (in Bonn, in Berlin). Seit September 2000-2008 Abteilungsleiter im Nationalen Institut für strategische Forschung, Lehrer  in der Universität Kiew, Diplomatische Akademie der Ukraine.

Seit November 2008 Direktor des Instituts für Europäische Studien der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften der Ukraine, daraus entstand im Jahre 2012 eine staatliche Institution „Institut für Weltgeschichte der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften der Ukraine.“ Seit 2012 bis heute, Direktor des „Instituts für Weltgeschichte der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften der Ukraine.“ 2018 korrespondierendes Mitglied der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften der Ukraine. Vorsitzender  der  Zeitschriftsredaktionen  „Probleme  der Weltgeschichte“,  Mitglied        von mehreren Redaktionen der wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften in der Ukraine und im Ausland. Forschungsfelder: Holocaust, Hungersnot in der Ukraine, ukrainisch-deutsche Beziehungen Mitte 20. – Anfang 21. Jh., das historische Gedächtnis der Ukrainer.

Lauren Ashley Bradford is a Doctoral Student at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University (Worcester, MA). Her dissertation topic “Cloaked in Femininity: Women’s Participation in Racial Terror in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America,” takes a comparative approach; exploring violence and racial terror in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America through a gendered analytical lens. More specifically, she will be exploring the ways in which “Aryan” and ethnic German women and American white women participated in public displays of violence in different social settings within two traditionally patriarchal societies. A comparative approach to these two ideologically similar structures of violence provides insight into under-researched aspects of women’s roles as perpetrators of and active participants in mass atrocities, violent policies, and racist regimes.

Alexander Kruglov, member of the Scientific Committee of Yahad – in Unum (France), is working on the naming of the executioners of Babi Yar and investigating their role in the extermination of the Jews of Kyiv in autumn 1941.

Luca Fiorito is a PhD candidate at the Department for Antiquities, Philosophy and History at the University of Genoa. In his doctoral project he aims at providing an overview of the international response to the publication of the “Race Manifesto” in July 1938 and to the following adoption of racial laws in fascist Italy, concentrating on German, British and Eastern-European reactions. In doing so he will deliver further insights on the role of racism and especially anti-Semitism in the relations between various European right wing parties and movements, as well as answers about the calculated use of various forms of racism in Italy’s foreign policy.

At the Institute for Contemporary History, Fiorito will extensively work with the Institute’s collection of German daily press, as well as scientific and political publications of the years 1938 to 1940. The objective of the research is to understand the way in which German journalists and scientific researchers refer to the introduction of racial politics in fascist Italy and get an understanding of the influence the Italian choices had on the German discourse on race. Of particular interest is the identification of different currents of thought on the German side, and their aspirations and criticisms towards the Italian concept of racism. During his stay at the HdWK at Berlin, Fiorito will also take into account the files of Alfred Rosenberg’s personal office and those of the German Foreign Ministry studying the reactions of the political sphere on the Italian decisions.

Prior to commencing his doctoral research, Fiorito received a Bachelor’s (cum laude) and Master’s Degree (cum laude) in History from the University of Genoa. He worked at the Ligurian Institute for Contemporary History and for the History of the Resistenza (ILSREC), participating in various research projects over the past six years.

Harry Legg is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. He is primarily interested in the everyday lives of those who did not describe themselves as Jewish but were labelled as such by Nazi racial law. His primary contention is that pre-1933 life had a profound impact on post-1933 responses to persecution. Nazi ideology did not arrive in a vacuum but had to push aside strong friendships and identities in its quest to achieve a so-called "Volksgemeinschaft". Harry has a recent article on the topic out in the Journal of Holocaust Research, with several others forthcoming in other journals.

Lovro Kralj is an Assistent at the History Department at the University of Rijeka where he also coordinates the Claims Conference University Partnership Program in Holocaust Studies. He specializes in the fields of fascism, antisemitism, and Holocaust studies with a regional focus on Central and South-Eastern Europe.
In his current project, he examines the impact of antisemitic ideology and policies on multiethnic communities in the borderlands of World War II-era Croatia. By utilizing the comparative approach, he aims to examine both cooperation and conflicting visions on how to solve the “Jewish question” among various fascist movements. He investigates how members of these fascist movements, as well as ordinary citizens, interpreted antisemitism and adapted it to their own agendas, thus producing a variety of competing visions of annihilation. Carefully situating antisemitism into a broader perspective of genocidal policies, Kralj focuses on cases where antisemitism become a tool of competitive nation-building among various Holocaust perpetrators. The results were often a proliferation of novel fantasies of ethnic cleansing and destruction of other ethnic and religious groups besides Jews.

Messan Tossa holds a PhD in German Studies and is a Research Assistant at the Togo State Archives as well as a Honorary Lecturer at the German Department of the Université de Lomé. His current research project "Artefacts of Holocaust Literature in the African Context" deals with literary entanglements between the Holocaust and the Genocide in Rwanda. His starting point is the supposition that poetic, thematic and formal cues of Holocaust literature have passed into the literature about the Rwandan genocide, in order to engage with the question of entanglements of the remembrance of different genocides. Additionally the project investigates the globalisation of acts of genocide remembrance and inquires into the question of the hierarchy of remembrance as concerns the categories of centre and periphery. 

Hanna (Anna) Abakunova is a postdoctoral researcher at Yad Vashem (Israel). She completed her PhD at the University of Sheffield (UK) with the dissertation titled “The Rescue and Self-Help of Jews and Roma in Ukraine during the Holocaust”.

Dr. Abakunova is the co-author of the “Annotated Bibliography on the Genocide and Persecution of Roma and Sinti”, published by IHRA (2016) and the author of other publications on the extermination and rescue of Jews and Roma in Ukraine published in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Romania, and the USA. From 2008 to 2017 she held positions as a research fellow at a number of institutions including the NIOD (Amsterdam), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the New Europe College (Bucharest), Yahad-in Unum (Paris), and Yad Vashem (Jerusalem). In 2017 and 2018 she was an EHRI fellow and conducted her research at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin and Ludwigsburg. In 2019-2021 she held postdoctoral fellowships at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Abakunova’s research interests encompass the history and memory of the Holocaust and the persecution of Roma in Ukraine under German and Romanian occupation. These interests include the rescue and self-rescue of Jews and Roma in Ukraine from a comparative perspective, inter-ethnic relations in Transnistria and southern Ukraine, the Holocaust Historiography in the post-Soviet countries, and memory of the persecution of Roma and Jews.

Abakunova’s current project is titled “Helping Ukrainian Jews by International Jewish and Non-Jewish Organizations”. She will focus on the activity of international Jewish and non-Jewish organizations operating in the territories of occupied Soviet Ukraine with an emphasis on former Polish territories – contemporary western Ukrainian cities Lviv and Ternopil, as well as the Ivano-Frankivsk regions.