Ms. Abigail Lewis

Professional Background

Abigail Lewis is currently PhD Candidate in History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (United States). As the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Fellow at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Ms. Lewis will conduct research for her dissertation, “The Collaborationist Eye: The History and Memory of French Photography under the Nazis.”

Over the past few years, Ms. Lewis has worked as Lecturer, Teaching Assistant, and Research and Writing Specialist for the History department at UW Madison. She has further been the recipient of several awards and fellowships throughout her academic career, including the George L. Mosse Teaching Fellowship (2017-2018) and the Chateaubriand Dissertation Fellowship from the French Embassy in the United States (2015-2016). In 2018, she presented parts of her dissertation at the University of Edinburgh and Yale.

A native English speaker, Ms. Lewis has language abilities in French and German.

Fellowship Research

While in residence at the museum, Ms. Lewis seeks to explore the production of official photography under the German Occupation in France and the roles that these photographs have played in French collective memory from 1940 until today. Drawing on the museum’s resources, her research will question how photography helped support and challenge fascism and antisemitism during the occupation, and how these same photos have continued to provoke public debates regarding Nazism, collaboration and the Holocaust.

Ms. Lewis will be in residence until April 30, 2019, and can be contacted at her museum email [alewis@ushmm.org](mailto: alewis@ushmm.org)