PhD Projects

Queen Mary Research Studentship Holder

Carmel Heeley received her BA in Philosophy and Holocaust Studies at the University of Manchester before completing an MA in European Jewish History at the Leo Baeck Institute, Queen Mary. Her MA thesis, entitled Volksgemeinschaft, Gender and the Nazi Concentration Camps, explored the relationship between moral sentiments, moral values and Nazism’s racialized conceptions of gender that underpinned the concentration camp system between 1933-1939.

Her research interests include: Third Reich history, German-Jewish history, anti-Semitism and Nazism’s persecutory policies, the history of emotions, as well as the moral framework of Nazi Germany.

Working Title: ‘German Jews, German Gentiles and the Alps: How Conceptions of Heimat, Bavarian Traditions and Moral Values defined ‘German’ Belongings and German-Jewish experience, 1920-1940.’

At its heart, my project engages with recent…

Tabea Maja Judith Richardson (Completed: 2021)

Queen Mary Principal’s Studentship holder

Tabea Richardson studied Drama and Theatre studies at the Universities of Winchester and Bochum (Germany) before completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism and an MA in International Studies at the University of Sheffield.

Her keen interest in the playing out of historical interrelations of national and cultural identities have led to her academic focus on British and German national identity construction with regards to their historic pasts as well as their differing relations with the State of Israel in the 20th century.

She is interested in researching how differing communities of memory and experience negotiate a shared co-existence in the present. This has led her to focus her current PhD project on the history of what has been called the Christian-Jewish Dialogue in Germany after the Holocaust.

In her…

Florence Largillière (Completed: 2019)

John A.S. Grenville Studentship in Modern Jewish History and Culture holder

Florence Largillière studied for her BA at Sciences Po Paris, and graduated in 2011. She went on to complete a first Research Master in History at the same institution, under the supervision of Prof. Marc Lazar. She then completed an MPhil in Modern European History at the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation, supervised by Dr. John Pollard, focused on the discourses of Italian Fascist Jews who had asked to be exempted from the Racial Laws in 1938.

Her research interests include modern European Jewish history, nationalism, the construction of identities, and, more generally, the social and cultural history of interwar Europe.

Nationalist Jews in France, Germany, and Italy Faced with Anti-Semitism: 1914-1940

I will be studying the minority of the French, German, and Italian Jewish…

Rodney Reznek (Completed: 2017)

Rodney Reznek MA, FRANZCR(hon),FFR RCSI(hon), FRCP,FRCR is currently Emeritus Professor of Diagnostic Imaging in the Cancer Institute, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London. He has authored/co-authored 195 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, 120 invited reviews and book chapters, over 200 scientific abstracts and edited 17 textbooks. He has been Editor-in-chief of 2 major scientific journals, section editor of another and on the editorial board of 2 other journals. He has held 8 visiting professorships and given several eponymous lectures around the world.

A Vocabulary of Difference: How Jews Were Denied Entry to South Africa in the 1930’s

Standard texts on the history of South Africa’s Jewish community portray it as the goldene medina (the golden utopia), yet on two separate occasions immigration of Jews was either severely curtailed or stopped:…

Joseph Cronin (Completed: 2016)

Leo Baeck Institute and Queen Mary Studentship in Modern Jewish History holder

Joseph Cronin studied at Durham University before going on to undertake PhD research at the Leo Baeck Institute and Queen Mary University of London in 2012.

His thesis, completed in 2016, is entitled: “Die Russen sind angekommen!”: Perceptions of Jews from the former Soviet Union in Germany’s Jewish Communities, 1990–2005.

Joseph’s research interests include postwar German-Jewish history, Holocaust memory and migration studies.

Dana Smith (Completed: 2015)

John A.S. Grenville Studentship in Modern Jewish History and Culture holder

Dana Smith received her BA from Centre College (Kentucky), where she majored in history. She then completed her MA at the University of Vermont under the supervision of Dr. Alan Steinweis, focusing on modern European history and Holocaust Studies. Her research interests include German Jewish history, National Socialism, Holocaust memory in post-war Germany, and the history of anti-Semitism. She was awarded the John A.S. Grenville Studentship in Modern Jewish History and Culture in 2012. She has passed her viva in 2015.

The “Jüdischer Kulturbund”: Jewish Cultural Life and Identity under Nazism

My research focuses on the “Jüdischer Kulturbund” (Jewish Cultural League), which existed throughout National Socialist Germany from 1933 until 1938, and continued to operate in Berlin until 1941. I am especially…