Professional Background
Victoria Gonzalez Maltes holds a PhD in history from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France. As a scholar of United States immigration history, Dr. Gonzalez Maltes’ doctoral research examined the processes of selection and exclusion of refugees seeking resettlement through the U.S. Displaced Persons Program in the immediate postwar period.
Dr. Gonzalez Maltes’ research has been supported by several grants and fellowships from prestigious organizations, including the Georges Lurcy Foundation and the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah. She has also held an Arthur Sachs Fellowship (French American Fulbright Commission) at Harvard University and was a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s history department.
Fellowship Research
While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Judith B. and Burton P. Resnick Invitational Fellow for the Study of Antisemitism, Victoria Gonzalez Maltes will conduct research for her project, “‘Make yourself healthy so that you’ll pass’: Antisemitic Persecution, Rehabilitation and U.S. Medical Bars to Immigration.” Her project examines how medical bars to immigration impacted Jewish refugees attempting to reach the United States before, during, and after the Holocaust. The physically debilitating effects of persecution on refugees made them vulnerable to U.S. immigration policy, which granted authorities broad latitude to reject prospective immigrants with perceived physical or mental deficiencies. Her project further examines how Jewish organizations and individuals responded to these exclusions, focusing their aid and rehabilitation efforts on helping refugees become eligible for immigration.
Residency Period: September 1, 2026 – April 30, 2027