Dr Mark Levene wins Lemkin Book Award 2015

There are important connections between Raphael Lemkin’s work and that of James Parkes’. At the same time Lemkin was campaigning against and developing the concept of genocide, Parkes was similarly campaigning and also writing the first accounts of what was later to be known as the Holocaust. In 2015, the Parkes Institute, of which Mark is a member, is celebrating its Golden Jubilee. It is thus highly appropriate that Mark Levene should be awarded the Lemkin Book Award this year.

In his letter to Mark, the Chair of the award committee writes:

‘The award honors Raphael Lemkin, the originator of the concept of genocide and first exponent of a United Nations Genocide Convention. The biennial award recognizes the best non-fiction book published in English or translated into English that focuses on explanations of genocide, crimes against humanity, state mass killings and gross violations of human rights, and strategies to prevent such crimes and violations. Past winners have included Yang Jisheng, Emma Gilligan, Darius Rejali, Donald Bloxham (formely a PhD student and Leverhulme Fellow in the Parkes Institute and History Department and now Professor of History at Edinburgh University), Peter Balakian, Samantha Power, and Alison Des Forges.

The award committee was impressed by the originality and scope of your argument and found that it marks an important advance in our understanding of genocide. In particular, the committee noted the many new insights afforded by a macro-level analysis of mass violence, which departs from much of the current research that privileges country-level case studies.’

Mark will be delivering a public lecture in New York at a meeting in the autumn convened by the Institute for the Study of Genocide. More information about the Institute is available here: http://studyofgenocide.org.