Dr Kara Critchell

I am a modern British and European historian. My principal research interests focus on the Holocaust and genocide, political violence and the memorialisation of conflict.

My research is both interdisciplinary and transnational focusing primarily on genocide and the memorialisation of conflict. My doctoral thesis explored the role of Holocaust education in the construction and mediation of British Holocaust consciousness and the subsequent impact this has had on conceptualisations of British identity. Alongside my continuing interest into British cultural engagement with genocide I have more recently begun conducting research into the figure of the perpetrator of mass violence and political violence in contemporary society. I also have an interest in places and spaces of violence and how digital technologies can facilitate engagement with the past, particularly with regards to landscapes of atrocity.

Before joining the Department of History and Archaeology I undertook teaching and research positions at the University of Winchester, University of Portsmouth and the University of Sussex. I recently held the position of Research Fellow at the University of Leeds working on the AHRC funded Virtual Holocaust Memoryscapes Project. I am also an Editor-in Chief of the Journal of Perpetrator Research, an inter-disciplinary, peer-reviewed open access journal committed to facilitating and promoting the scholarly study of perpetrators of political violence.