Ms. Andriana Benčić

Professional Background

Ms. Andriana Benčić is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Zagreb in Croatia and a project researcher at the Jasenovac Memorial Site. She possesses language skills in English, German, Spanish, Bosnian, and Serbian. While in residence at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Ms. Benčić conducted research on her project “Jasenovac Trauma, Memory, and Solidarity: A Sociological Challenge.”

Ms. Benčić has published several papers, including “Lessons of the Holocaust: Sociology of Holocaust of Zygmunt Bauman” in Social Ecology 22:2 (2013) and “Jasenovac in front of Challenges of Memory” in REKOM Initiative Voice 12 (2013). Her presentations include "The Complexity of Commemorating in South-East Europe: The Site of Jasenovac – Donja Gradina and its Future" at the 2013 conference Conveying the Holocaust at the Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris, and the poster presentation entitled "How toRrepresent Trauma without Further Traumatization," held at the 2012 conference Forgotten War and Occupation Heritage: Shedding Light on a Darkness, which took place at the McDonald Institute for Archeological Research at the University of Cambridge. She also participated in the 2013 Yad Vashem summer school, during which she gave a joint presentation, Jasenovac: A Ring of Violence˝.

Fellowship Research

For her Leon Milman Memorial Fellowship, Ms. Benčić used testimony to examine how the cultural trauma of the Second World War is integrated into collective memory in present-day Croatia. 

Ms. Andriana Benčić was in residence at the Mandel Center from November 1, 2014 to January 31, 2015.