During his residency, Michael Casper was Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of California, Los Angeles (USA). He holds a M.A. and C.Phil. in History from UCLA. As the Fund for the Study of the Holocaust in Lithuania Fellow at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Mr. Casper conducted research for his project titled, "Life During Wartime: Biržai and the Holocaust in the Lithuanian Heartland."
Mr. Casper’s work has been supported by numerous academic fellowships, including from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, the Center for Jewish History and the Posen Society of Fellows.
Mr. Casper’s research languages include Yiddish, Lithuanian, Hebrew and German.
Drawing on the museum’s resources, Mr. Casper completed a comprehensive study of the Second World War in the Lithuanian city of Biržai by synthesizing Jewish, Lithuanian, Soviet and German sources. His dissertation, "Strangers and Sojourners: The Politics of Jewish Belonging in Lithuania, 1914-1940," is a cultural and intellectual history of Jewish belonging in interwar Lithuania. His work also addresses how the Holocaust in Biržai has been memorialized in a number of different contexts.
Mr. Casper was in residence through April 30, 2019.
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