Dr. Laurien Vastenhout
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Biography
Laurien Vastenhout is researcher and lecturer at the NIOD/University of Amsterdam (UvA). In recent years, her research has focused on the history of World War II in Western Europe, the persecution of the Jews, the creation and functioning of ‘Jewish Councils’, and the Jewish communities in Western Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Her research projects are comparative and transnational in nature. Her book Between Community and Collaboration: ‘Jewish Councils’ in Western Europe under Nazi Occupation (Cambridge University Press, 2022) was awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research in 2023. In 2024, a Dutch translation of this book appeared. Laurien currently leads a research project on ‘Jewish’/’non-Jewish’ ‘mixed’ couples during the Holocaust in Western Europe, funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Laurien was involved in the creation of various exhibitions, including The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940-1945, which was shown in the National Holocaust Museum (NHM) in Amsterdam and Topographie des Terrors (Berlin). In addition, together with Erik Somers, she led the project De Tweede Wereldoorlog in honderd foto's ('The Second World War in 100 Photographs'), from which the book of the same name and various exhibitions also emerged. Laurien has been a fellow at several research institutes, including Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (Israel) and Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris (France). She has been awarded several prizes and scholarships for her work such as the Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies and the Sir Ian Kershaw Prize.