Professional Background
Dr. Sayantani Jana Barreras received a PhD in history from the University of Southern California (2026), where her research focused on comparative genocide studies, with particular emphasis on Holocaust studies and Indian partition studies. Her dissertation, "Rethinking Pogroms and Riots: Urban Space, Gender, and Collectivized Violence in the 1938 November Pogrom in Berlin and the 1946 Great Calcutta Riots," offers a micro-historical analysis of these two events through a comparative framework of “collectivized violence” that she developed.
Dr. Jana Barreras’s work has appeared in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, which published her article "Decolonization and Genocide: Re-Examining Indian Partition, 1946–1947" in Winter 2022. Her article "Resilient Women, Defiant Homes: Resistance and Survival in the Great Calcutta Killings of 1946" is forthcoming in the Journal of Women's History (expected Winter 2027). Her research has been supported by a number of fellowships and grants, such as the Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World Fellowship, the Gerald D. Feldman Grant from the Max Weber Foundation, the American Academy of Jewish Research Travel Grant, and the Central European History Society Dissertation Research Grant. She has presented her work at several prestigious conferences, including the International Network of Genocide Scholars, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and Lessons and Legacies.
Fellowship Research
As a Broadening Academia Initiative Hybrid Fellow, Dr. Jana Barreras will conduct research on the November 1938 violence in Berlin, as she develops her dissertation into a book manuscript. Expanding on her previous work mapping the movements of SA (Sturmabteilung), NSKK (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps; National Socialist Motorist Corps), and SS (Schutzstaffel) perpetrator groups through the city, she will deepen this inquiry by examining SS and Gestapo movements in greater detail, with particular attention to their coordination with SA and NSKK units. For this stage of the project, she will also investigate the misrepresentation of deaths resulting from the violence, building on a database she created using the funeral registers of the Weißensee Cemetery, which revealed evidence of falsified death records concealing murders. Dr. Jana Barreras will draw in particular on the Museum's collections of personal accounts, such as testimonies, letters, and memoirs. She also plans to develop a visual narrative of lived experiences of violence across the city, building on her research into the differential experiences of Jewish men and women and women's proactive roles in mitigating harm to their homes and families.
Residency Period: November 1, 2026-April 30, 2027