CfP Deadline : 1st August 2025 « 28th Workshop on NS Camps and Killing Sites »

Call for Papers and Participants
28th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites 8 June – 14 June 2026, Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany Deadline for applications: 1st August 2025

The History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites Workshop invites you to apply to the 28th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites, which will take place at the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum and across the Berlin-Brandenburg region in Germany, from 8 to 14 June 2026. This year’s workshop will focus on scale and trajectories as analytical categories for studying the Holocaust, Nazi concentration camps, killing sites, and other National Socialist crimes.
Since 1994, this international workshop—organized by and for emerging scholars, practitioners and Holocaust educators—has provided an interdisciplinary and non-hierarchical forum dedicated to research on National Socialist camps and killing sites. Participants examine a wide range of topics, including persecution, isolation, forced labor, mass murder, and the representation of Nazi violence in various memorial cultures. The workshop fosters a collaborative, supportive, and comparative approach to studying these histories through an array of methodologies and sources. To ensure a space free from traditional academic hierarchies, the program is open exclusively to applicants who have not handed in their PhD dissertation at the time of application (i.e., PhD candidates, MA students, emerging practitioners and Holocaust educators). Participants may attend the workshop up to three times: as a speaker, participant, and organizer. Workshop Theme: Scale and Trajectories
National Socialist violence and the Holocaust unfolded across vast geographic landscapes while profoundly shaping the lived experiences of individuals caught within its machinery of persecution. Since the spatial turn in Holocaust studies, scholars have increasingly examined the ways in which Nazi violence was structured—how ghettos, concentration camps, and killing sites functioned not just as hybrid sites of persecution and genocide but as dynamic nodes in a transnational system of terror. This perspective has been further enhanced by the mobilities turn, which emphasizes the movement of people, information, and power across borders, and the microhistorical turn, which sheds light on the granular, personal dimensions of history and the local dynamics of persecution. Inspired by these turns, this workshop hopes to continue in this promising direction by analyzing how the crimes of National Socialism were enacted through space and time.
This workshop places scale and trajectories at the center of analysis, asking how scholars can move between different levels of historical inquiry—from the broad, structural mechanisms of Nazi violence and genocide to the individual experiences of displacement, internment, and survival. The violence of National Socialism was both a global event and a deeply personal rupture, affecting entire regions while fundamentally reshaping individual lives. Scale allows us to explore this tension, shifting between the macro-level organization of Nazi persecution and the micro-level decisions, movements, and struggles of those caught within it.
At the same time, the concept of trajectories challenges static representations of Nazi violence. While concentration camps and ghettos are often imagined as enclosed spaces of confinement, they were in fact deeply entangled with movement and transfer. Victims frequently experienced multiple sites of persecution, undergoing forced relocations from ghettos to transit camps, from labor camps to killing centers, or onto the death marches that marked the Holocaust’s final phase. Meanwhile, flight, resistance, and clandestine survival were also shaped by movement, as refugees and escapees navigated shifting wartime geographies, seeking safety amid rapidly changing political and military conditions.
By foregrounding scale and trajectories, this workshop aims to illuminate both the structural logic of Nazi violence and the deeply personal dimensions of persecution and survival. We encourage methodological approaches that move beyond rigid spatial categories, incorporating insights from geospatial analysis, digital humanities, survivor testimonies, and comparative frameworks. In doing so, we hope to further discussions on the interconnectedness of National Socialist camps and killing sites, the lived experiences of victims and refugees, and the ways in which genocide functioned across different levels of space and time.
We seek papers that examine:
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The spatial logic of ghettos, concentration camps, and killing sites, analyzing how victims navigated these spaces and the mechanisms of forced movement. *
The paradox of mobility and constraint: how deportation, internment, and mass murder operated through both enforced immobility and dynamic, shifting geographies of violence. *
Trajectories of prisoners and perpetrators through the camp system – whether individual detention routes and biographies, group fates, or mass transports – that illuminate the connections between different camp types and locations. *
The topic of refugees and exile, including how individuals and groups experienced displacement, temporary asylum, and repeated forced migrations. *
Digital humanities and GIS approaches that reconstruct movement patterns and spatial interactions at different scales. *
Gendered and embodied dimensions of forced movement, including sexual violence, coercion, and survival strategies. *
Methodological reflections on the relationship between macro- and microhistory within Holocaust studies – for instance, the interplay between overarching administrative structures and on-site personnel, the movements of the front line and individual prisoner transports, among other dynamics. *
Representations of trajectories in survivor testimonies, visual media, literature, and museum/memorial spaces. *
Trajectories of survivors (including but not limited to experiences in displaced persons (DP) camps and/or the aftermath of experiencing forced movement) *
Entangled or comparative trajectories that link Nazi persecution to other regimes of violence, tracing how people, practices and institutions moved across borders and historical contexts such as colonial empires.
Application
The 28th Workshop invites emerging scholars and educators whose research relates to the themes of scale and trajectories before, during, and after the Second World War and the Holocaust. We welcome papers exploring the history and memory of concentration and death camps, ghettos, and killing sites, as well as interdisciplinary approaches that bring new methodological perspectives.
The workshop is not exclusively limited to these themes; we welcome proposals that place the history of concentration camps, killing sites, and ghettos at the center of their study. In addition, we strongly encourage applications from early-career archivists, Holocaust educators, curators, and museum professionals. We particularly encourage applicants from scholars across all regions and communities globally. Submission Guidelines
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Speakers should submit: *
A one-to-two-page CV *
A bio (max 150 words) *
An abstract (300 words) of their proposed paper *
Participants should submit: *
A one-to-two-page CV *
A bio (max 150 words) *
A motivation letter (300 words) explaining the workshop’s relevance to their research or professional activities

All applications must be submitted in a single PDF file and emailed to [ mailto:workshopnscamps20265@gmail.com | workshopnscamps2026@gmail.com ] by 1st August 2025 .
Presentations and discussions will be held in English and should not exceed 20 minutes. We encourage open and innovative presentation formats. Extensive time will be allocated for discussion.
We are currently applying for funding to cover the costs of the workshop, including accommodation and travel expenses. It is our goal to fully fund all invited speakers and participants, but priority will be given to applicants demonstrating financial need in an optional personal statement submitted with their application. We are also committed to accommodating special needs (e.g., childcare, dietary restrictions) as funding allows. All confirmed speakers and participants must attend the entire workshop.
After the conference, we intend to publish a selection of the papers/projects presented.
For further details, please visit our website: workshopnscamps.com. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the Organizing Team at [ mailto:workshopnscamps2026@gmail.com | workshopnscamps2026@gmail.com ] . Organizing Team
Catharine Aretakis, Corinna Bittner, Kolja Buchmeier, Spenser Carroll-Johnson, Valentine Devulder, Eva Hasel, Noah Krasman, Aliisa Råmark and Lior Tibet.
Organized in cooperation with the Dr. Hildegard Hansche Stiftung and the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum.
— Nadja VUCKOVIC Chargée de communication EHESS – École des hautes études en sciences sociales Centre de Recherches Historique s ( Bureau B 04_20) (Le CRH et les groupes de recherches : AHLOMA, EJ, GEI, GEHM, HHS, Histoire du genre) 54, boulevard Raspail – 75006 PARIS [ http://www.ehess.fr/ ] [ https://crh.ehess.fr/ | https://crh.ehess.fr  ]