About Me
I am a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in research on the implementation of policies for the promotion of tolerance, Holocaust education, and human rights in Eastern Europe. I earned my PhD in Educational Policy and Anthropology from the Wright School of Education at Indiana University.
Anthropology, to borrow the words of Henry F. Wollcott, is not just a research tool, but a way of seeing. Having spent over a decade researching Holocaust education and political transformation in the post-Soviet States, I am committed to scholarship that promotes new ways of understanding ongoing issues so that policy implementation can more effectively promote tolerance, democracy, human rights, and pluralism. The lessons learned in Eastern Europe are applicable in many other parts of the world, especially countries dealing with what is often termed “difficult histories.”
I currently specialize in educational consulting for the development of new Holocaust education models, pedagogies, and programs.
Recent Publications
Holocaust Education in Lithuania: Community, Conflict, and the Making of Civil Society published by Lexington Press (a division of Rowman and Littlefield Press; 2017).
This book examines how different community relationships shape educational practices in Lithuanian Holocaust education. Based on nearly a decade of research in Lithuania and the US, this study finds that teachers participate in Holocaust education for a variety of reasons, including feeling disenfranchised from contemporary representations of national identity, and a desire to have an immediate impact of defining more inclusive notions of democratic citizenship.
This book won the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies 2018 Honorable Mention Prize. The review committee said that the book “makes an original, comprehensive and significant contribution to the analysis and evaluation of Holocaust education in Lithuania, based on extensive fieldwork and building on earlier publications. The issue of Holocaust education is of central importance to Lithuania’s integration in Europe in terms of political, cultural and educational matters.”
Upcoming Presentations
- See you at AHOs 2022 in Charlotte