Svenja Bethke
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University of Leicester
Svenja Bethke is a social and cultural historian of late 19th and 20th c. Europe in its global context. She specializes in the history of modern Europe and Israel/Palestine, Jews, the Holocaust and migration in their global dimensions, drawing on eight modern research languages and interdisciplinary approaches. She is currently associate professor in Modern European History at the University of Leicester and the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Her first book, Dance on the Razor’s Edge: Crime and Punishment in the Nazi Ghettos (German version in 2015; revised English version with UTP in 2021), awarded four international prizes, examined concepts of criminality and law and the emergence of an internal ‘Jewish’ legal sphere in the Nazi ghettos. Her current research explores the role of migrant groups in the making, advertising and consumption of fashion. During her research visit, she will work on a monograph that explores the history of European Jewish migration to Palestine/Israel between the 1880s and the 1950s through the lens of dress in a transnational context. Her research has been supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem between 2019-2021, and a British Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship (2023-2026).