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Dr Waitman Beorn

Associate Professor

Department: Social Sciences

Dr. Waitman Wade Beorn is an associate professor in History at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.  Dr. Beorn was previously the Director of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, VA and the inaugural Blumkin Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.  His first book, Marching Into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus (Harvard University Press) Dr. Beorn is also the author of The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution (Bloomsbury Press, 2018) and has recently finished a book on the Janowska concentration camp outside of Lviv, Ukraine. That book Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv was released in August 2024 from Nebraska University Press.  Between the Wires was recognised as a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in the United States.

He is currently on research leave thanks to an AHRC Research, Development, and Engagement Fellowship.  This fellowship supports his work on a project entitled Visualizing Janowska: Creating a Digital Architectural Model of a Nazi Concentration Camp.  This interdisciplinary project will build a digital reconstruction of the Janowska concentration camp based on historical sources as most of the site is gone today.  Dr. Beorn is managing a team of architects and digital modellers to accomplish this and is partnered with the Holocaust Education Trust, the Wiener Holocaust Library, the Lviv Center for Urban History, the Duke Digital Art History and Visual Culture Lab, and the Holocaust Center North.

 Dr. Beorn has published work in Holocaust and Genocide StudiesCentral European HistoryGerman Studies Review, Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and HistoryPolitics and Governance, and the Geographical Review in addition to chapters in several edited volumes.  He has been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and Claims Conference fellowships. He is also active in the digital humanities.  

As a public-facing scholar, Dr. Beorn has published pieces in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and The Forward.  He has also appeared on MSNBC, CNNRichard French Live on WRNN, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and TRT. He is an active contributor to public history and engagement on Twitter as well. Dr. Beorn teaches courses in Holocaust History, Comparative Genocide, German history, Eastern European history, Antisemitism, Modern European history, Public history, and Digital history. 

Waitman Beorn

- Holocaust History

- Comparative Genocide

- Digital Humanities

- Geography and Mapping

- Public History

- Modern German History

- Extremism, White Supremacy, Antisemitism

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv, Beorn, W. 1 Aug 2024
  • The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution, Beorn, W. 8 Feb 2018
  • Marching Into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus, Beorn, W. 6 Jan 2014
  • All the Other Neighbors: Communal Genocide in Eastern Europe, Beorn, W. Jun 2020, A Companion to the Holocaust, Hoboken, NJ, Blackwell Publishing
  • Unravelling Janowska: Excavating an Understudied Camp Through Spatial Testimonies, Beorn, W. 20 Sep 2019, Beyond "Ordinary Men", Paderborn, Verlag Ferdinand Schoeningh GmbH
  • Last Stop in Lwów: Janowska as a Hybrid Camp, Beorn, W. 1 Dec 2018, In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Harriet Galler Interacting Memories: Commemorative Narratives of the Holocaust and Cambodian Genocide Start Date: 18/01/2021

  • History MA April 09 2007
  • History BSc May 27 2000
  • History PhD
  • Fellow, Royal Historical Society FRHistS 2023
  • Fellow, UK Higher Education Academy UK HEA 2020


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