Dr. Donald Bloxham

Professional Background

Donald Bloxham received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Southampton and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Keele. During his tenure at the Museum, he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. For his J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship, Professor Bloxham conducted research for his project, “The ‘Final Solution’: A Genocide in Its Contexts.”

Professor Bloxham was the youngest full professor of history in the United Kingdom at the time of his fellowship. He is the winner of several prizes and honors for his work including a 2006 Philip Leverhulme Prize, a 2007 University of Edinburgh Chancellor’s Award, and the 2007 Raphael Lemkin Award for genocide scholarship. He is author of Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory (Oxford University Press, 2001); The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford University Press, 2005); The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches (Manchester University Press, 2005, with Tony Kushner); and Genocide, the World Wars, and the Unweaving of Europe (Vallentine, Mitchell and Co., 2008). He is co-editor with Ben Flanagan of Remembering Belsen: Eye-Witnesses Record the Liberation (Vallentine, Mitchell and Co., 2005). He is co-editor with Mark Levene of the ten-volume Oxford monograph series Zones of Violence and co-editor with A. Dirk Moses of Oxford Handbook of Genocide, both of which were forthcoming at the time of his fellowship. In addition, he is the author of nearly fifty articles and book chapters, and during his tenure served on the editorial board of four journals: Holocaust Studies, Patterns of Prejudice, Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung, and the Journal of Genocide Research.

Fellowship Research

During his tenure at the Center, Professor Bloxham wrote a book length project entitled “The Final Solution: A Genocide and Its Contexts.” The aim of this volume was to place the Holocaust into a series of historical contexts, including demographic re-engineering in early twentieth century Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, and to examine the perpetration of the genocide in comparison with that of other genocides. Professor Bloxham was interviewed as part of the Museum’s podcast series “Voices on Genocide Prevention.” He spoke about the effect of the Nuremberg trials on attitudes of the German public and of post-World War I trials of top Ottoman officials on attitudes of the Turkish public. The podcast is available online at http://blogs.ushmm.org/COC2/.

Professor Bloxham was in residence at the Mandel Center from September 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008; August 4 to September 5, 2008.