Professional Background
Théophile Leroy is a historian specializing in the genocide and persecution of Sinti and Roma in Western Europe. He holds a PhD in history from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, France) and is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Rivesaltes Camp Memorial. He also served as a research assistant at the University of Strasbourg, where he taught courses on contemporary history.
Dr. Leroy’s research focuses on the persecution of Sinti, Manouche, and Yenish families in the Rhine region between 1938 and 1946. His work reconstructs the trajectories of persecuted families by combining police and administrative archival documentation with survivor testimonies and postwar compensation files to highlight the role of identification practices, police institutions, and transnational dynamics in the implementation of genocidal policies. His broader research interests include genocide studies, the history of antigypsyism, and the relationship between racial identification, knowledge production and state violence.
In addition, Dr. Leroy has contributed to several international research projects, including the online Encyclopaedia of the Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe, and has published articles and book chapters on the identification, deportation, and persecution of Sinti and Roma in Western Europe. He has also curated exhibitions in France and organized international workshops, such as the 25th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites.
Fellowship Research
While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Pearl Resnick Postdoctoral Fellow, Théophile Leroy will conduct research on the deportation of Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz-Birkenau, with a particular focus on the BIIe camp section. His project seeks to reconstruct the individual and familial trajectories of the approximately 22,700 deportees by linking prewar identification records, camp registers, and postwar compensation files. Drawing on a transnational approach, this research aims to provide the first comprehensive account of the scope, geography, and social dynamics of these deportations within the broader history of the Sinti and Roma genocide.
Residency Period: September 1, 2026 - April 30, 2027