The Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (ZfA) is recruiting a PhD candidate/doctoral student for a 3 years position starting on 1.10.2025 in the German DFG and French ANR funded project FIMEMO (First Memories and Forms of Knowledge) dedicated to a comparative research on the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The project aims at examining, mapping and reflecting on the first forms of memory, documentation projects, memorial and material practices and, more widely, forms of knowledge production developed in the first two decades after the genocides by their survivors (1945-1965 for the Holocaust and 1994-2014 for the genocide against the Tutsi). In the aftermath of both events, it was mainly survivors or members of the affected communities in the diaspora that organised the first commemorations, searched for bodies, conducted exhumations and reburials and collected testimonies. Both in Rwanda and in post-Holocaust Europe, the forms of memorialisation and scholarship created by survivors tended to be progressively overshadowed by other forms of memorialization or research, particularly by those controlled or standardised by national and international policies, and scholarly and cultural productions. The FIMEMO project reclaims and critically investigates the bottom-up, grassroots, vernacular, and activist constructions of memory and understandings of the genocide established by the affected communities vis-à-vis those fostered by states bodies and dominant scholarly institutions.

The PhD candidate will be based at the ZfA in Berlin with the German team under the direction of Dr. Zuzanna Dziuban, but work closely with the French partners at the Centre Marc Bloch Berlin.

• Active participation in the organisation of the activities of the research project (workshops, conferences, public events)
• Presentation of your research findings in peer-reviewed publications and at conferences
• Work on a dissertation that will address one or several topics covered in the FIMEMO project and focus on the early post-Holocaust practices of Jewish survivors
• exploring the largely unsearched archives of several Jewish survivor scholars, archival material, and memorial books addressing postwar memorial and material practices performed by Jewish survivors, including forms of forensic activism (search for bodies, exhumations and reburials)
• spend research periods in Poland (at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw) and in New York at the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research and at the New York Public Library

• Successfully completed university studies (MA or equivalent) in Jewish Studies, Literature, Cultural Studies, Genocide Studies, History or Anthropology and History of Knowledge
• Perfect command of English and Yiddish (including handwriting)
• Interest in and/or previous research on bottom-up, positioned, embodied, and activist forms of memory and knowledge production in the aftermath of the Holocaust
• Knowledge in Polish and/or Hebrew and/or German are desirable
• Ability to work, both independently and collaboratively is a plus

Please send your application with the reference number and the usual documents only by email (combined in a single pdf file, max. 5 MB) to Prof. Dr. Schüler-Springorum via sekretariat@asf.tu-berlin.de

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To ensure equal opportunities between women and men, applications by women with the required qualifications are explicitly desired. Qualified individuals with disabilities will be favored. The TU Berlin values the diversity of its members and is committed to the goals of equal opportunities. Applications from people of all nationalities and with a migration background are very welcome.