Colonial Paradigms of Violence

European Holocaust Studies (EHS) publishes key international research results on the murder of the European Jews and its wider contexts.

In recent years, scholars have rediscovered Hannah Arendts 'boomerang thesis' - the 'coming home' of European colonialism as genocide on European soil - as well as Raphael Lemkins work around his definition of genocide and the importance of its colonial dimensions. Germany and other European states are increasingly engaging in debates on comparing the Holocaust to other genocides and cases of mass killing, memorialization, 'decolonization' and attempts to come to terms with the past ('Vergangenheitsbewältigung').

Michelle Gordon is a researcher at the Hugo Valentin Center at Uppsala University, Sweden, and currently heads the project, 'The 'Civilised' Nature of Nineteenth-Century Warfare? British and German Practices of Violence in Colonial and Intra-European Wars'. She earned her MA and PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, before completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the HVC in genocide studies. Gordon`s research interests include European colonial violence, and the role of European perpetrators in extreme violence.

Rachel O`Sullivan is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Holocaust Studies, Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. She completed her MA at University College Dublin and her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2019. She has previously held fellowships with the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), Center for Holocaust Studies and the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI). Her research interests include genocide, colonialism, society and culture, and the Holocaust.