Leading Holocaust specialist receives honour

Suzanne Bardgett is Head of Research at the Imperial War Museum, London and received the award from the School of Law, Social Sciences and Communications.

The Honorary Degree of Doctor of Arts was awarded by the University in recognition of Suzanne’s significant contribution to research on survivors of Nazi persecution.

Every January, the University of Wolverhampton hosts a Holocaust Memorial Day lecture and invites a Holocaust survivor to present a lecture on their experiences.

Suzanne said: “I am very honoured and delighted by this award. Working on the Holocaust Exhibition in the late 1990s was for me a great privilege and all who worked on it have been very pleased at the consistently high numbers of visitors to it. There has been an especially high level of interest from the higher education sector in the UK and overseas, and I have been very pleased at the success of the many conferences and seminars that we have held – including most significantly the triennial Beyond Camps and Forced Labour conference in which the University of Wolverhampton is a key player.”

Suzanne Bardgett is Head of Research at the Imperial War Museum, London. After working in the fields of education, publications and exhibitions at the Museum, from 1986 to1995 she was General Editor of the Imperial War Museum Review.

From 1995 to 2000 she led the team that created the Holocaust Exhibition, and subsequently directed the exhibition Crimes Against Humanity: An Exploration of Genocide and Ethnic Violence. From 2004 to 2007 she facilitated a Bosnian team’s creation of the Srebrenica Memorial Room in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

From 2008 she led a programme to reinvigorate research at the Museum. She is one of the four organisers of the conference Beyond Camps and Forced Labour: Current Research into Survivors of Nazi Persecution; has published numerous articles and edited two books: Belsen 1945: New Historical Perspectives, and Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Europe after the Second World War: Landscapes after Battle Volumes 1 and 2.

The University’s graduation ceremonies are being held at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre from Thursday, 1 September to Friday 9 September 2011.

ENDS

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