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The University of Southampton
The Parkes Institute

Holocaust

The Parkes Institute is at the forefront of Holocaust studies both nationally and internationally.

Many staff members' research and teaching focuses on the broad subject of the Holocaust, and the result is a lively intellectual community that generates rich and sustained conversation and collaborative work. Our individual research ranges from the responses of Allied countries to representation of the Holocaust in television and film, music in the ghettos and camps, and an ambitious multi-volume project on comparative genocide. Within the broad scope of these and other on-going interdisciplinary projects a number of common themes emerge, including in particular the experiences and responses of ‘ordinary' Holocaust victims and refugees from Nazism, and the diverse legacies of the genocide in the post-war world.

The Parkes Institute is the home of the journals Holocaust Studies and Patterns of Prejudice as well as the newly-established British Association for Holocaust Studies. Members also contribute to advisory groups and forums in the UK and abroad related to Holocaust education and memorialisation. Our academic research informs a well-developed programme of educational initiatives, exhibitions, and electronic resources that challenge audiences to reflect on the individual consequences of discrimination and urge them to respond to the continuing contemporary dangers of genocide.

Shirli Gilbert

My research centres broadly on the Holocaust. I have published widely on music in the Nazi ghettos and camps as well as on issues relating to Holocaust memory, and my current research explores the ways in which the Holocaust shaped understandings of and responses to apartheid in South Africa (1948-1994).

James Jordan

My work takes me across a number of different fields that intersect with an interest and research expertise in Holocaust studies and education, Post-war Britain, museums and public history, film and television studies, history, race and racism.

Tony Kushner

My main research area is British Jewish history in the late 19th and 20th centuries covering the social history of British Jewry, immigration issues and responses to the Jews. I also have strong interests in the Holocaust (especially liberal democratic responses and post-war representation), refugee movements, immigration and ethnicity in modern British history and general issues of history, representation and the heritage industry.

Mark Levene

Though my background and teaching has been particularly in modern Jewish history, my major focus in the last decade has been in plotting and attempting to interpret the pattern of genocide in recent history. I feel strongly that the phenomenon cannot be viewed as a series of isolated aberrations, but rather as evidence of a much more serious systemic dysfunction in the nature of western-led international society as it has emerged in the last two to three hundred years.

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