Emily Cohen

Professional Background

Emily Cohen is a doctoral student of history at Vanderbilt University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history and German from Bowdoin College, where her thesis examined the Jewish community and memory of Nazi persecution in East Berlin. Her current research concerns German-Jewish relations, transnational Holocaust memory, and the co-constitution of German and Jewish political identities in the twentieth century. She is also interested in Jewish diasporic and cultural history and is studying Yiddish. 

Prior to attending Vanderbilt, Ms. Cohen spent two years in Eisenstadt, Austria, teaching English on a Fulbright grant. Ms. Cohen has also interned at the Jewish Women’s Archive and volunteered at the YIVO Institute, helping to digitize their Jewish Labor and Political Archives.  

Fellowship Research

While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Summer Graduate Student Research Fellow, Emily Cohen will conduct research on transnational interactions between Holocaust survivor associations, German Jews, and organizations dedicated to Holocaust memorialization and education. Using archival materials in German, English, Spanish, Yiddish, and French, she will show how Holocaust survivors encountered the “land of the perpetrators” and sought to (re)construct Jewish life in diaspora and in Germany after 1945.

Residency Period: June 1, 2026 – August 31, 2026