Current students

Rachel Colquhoun, MA, Germanic and Slavic Studies,
with a concentration in Holocaust Studies

Liping Ge, MA, Germanic and Slavic Studies

Liping wrote her thesis on The Cultural Politics in East Germany and China: Literature and Art (1949-1979).

Michaela Sawyer, MA, Holocaust Studies

Before completing her MA in Holocaust Studies, Michaela also received a diploma in Cultural Resource Management through UVIC in 2020. As well as a BA with a joint major in History and World Literature from SFU before that. Michaela’s masters research sought to combine her work in the Cultural Resource Management field with the Holocaust Studies stream by examining the restitution of art and artifacts stolen during the Second World War. Her research project, entitled “Going Home: Restitution of Little-Known Casualties of the Second World War (A Herzog and Cassirer Case Study)” examines the idea of Object Biographies and how the inclusion of this concept in restitution work is something often overlooked but equally important in the lives of these objects.

Alan Bancroft, MA, Slavic Studies

Alan holds an Associate of Arts from Collin College (2016), a BA in Slavic Studies with Honours from the University of Victoria (2019), and an MA in Slavic Studies from the University of Victoria (2021). He has presented papers at multiple conferences during his studies at UVic, including "The Carnivalesque, Modernity, and Post-Modernity in the Films of Ilya Khrzhanovsky" at the Identity - Culture - Text UVic Graduate Conference on Mikhail Bakhtin; "From FEKS to Socialist Realism: Ideology and Continuity in The New Babylon (1929), Alone (1931), and The Youth of Maxim (1935)" at the UVic Interdisciplinary Conference on Identity, Gender and Ideology; and "Guy Maddin's Seances (2016): A Network of Loss. New Media, Network Pessimism, and Destituent Power" at the UVic Cultural, Social, and Political Thought Symposium. His research interests include socialist realist cinema, avant-garde cinema, the aesthetics of Stalinism, Marxism, critical theory, and visual art, all of which he attempts to incorporate into his own filmmaking practice. 

Alan defended his MA thesis, "The Sublated Style of a Cinema In Transition: Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, and Oleksandr Dovzhenko from the 1920s - 1930s" in June 2021. He has one publication in the experimental journal Academia Letters (2021) entitled "Arguing for the Soviet Transition Film: Oleksander Dovzhenko's Ivan (1931)" and is currently a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal, QC. 

Eliza McClenagan, MA, Holocaust Studies

Eliza completed a BA in English and History at the University of Northern British Columbia before coming to UVic for her MA. She is particularly interested in Christian antisemitism, churches’ responses to the Holocaust, and Christian-Jewish relations in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Eliza’s MA thesis focuses on developments in German Protestant theology in the years prior to and during the Holocaust. She examines the growth of more radical Protestant movements and the ways in which Protestant theological texts showed a gradual increase in anti-Jewish elements in the years leading up to 1933.

Emma Murray, MA, Slavic Studies

  Emma Murray is an MA graduate of the Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria. She received her Bachelor’s degree from UVic in History and Slavic Studies with a specific interest in Ukrainian Studies, completing a Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award project on the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity. As an undergraduate, Emma also studied at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine through the department’s summer study abroad program.

Emma’s research investigated the commemoration of the 2013/14 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity and the ways in which memorialization of such may influence efforts to establish a sound system of democracy in Ukraine. In her first year as a graduate student, she conducted primary research in Ukraine to support her thesis by interviewing residents of Kyiv about the legacy of the revolution. She also undertook a volunteer position with the National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv, collecting information about museums and exhibits across the city in order to provide feedback and make recommendations regarding the future development of the museum.

In addition to her fieldwork in Ukraine and research at UVic, Emma also served as a graduate student representative on the Executive Board of the Canadian Association of Slavists. She has given presentations at multiple academic conferences, both locally and abroad, sharing her research on the revolution and enthusiasm for the subject.

Her thesis “Heavenly Fighters for Ukrainian Civil Society: The Cultivation of Democratic Culture through the Memorialization of the Revolution of Dignity” is available to read on the UVicSpace website. 

Giorgia Ricciardi, MA, Holocaust Studies

Giorgia Ricciardi is a 2021 Master's graduate in the Holocaust studies stream at the University of Victoria. She received her Bachelor of Arts from UVic in 2018, completing a double major in History and Spanish. During her undergraduate degree, Giorgia completed a Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award Project on the largest Fascist Italian internment camp for Jews: Ferramonti di Tarsia. Before returning to UVic to begin her Master's, Giorgia lived in Madrid, Spain, teaching English. 

Giorgia's SSHRC-funded Master’s research focused on the history of Spanish Republican women in the French Resistance and in Nazi camps, and their memorialization in Spain today. Her research interests include gender and resistance during the Holocaust, and her interdisciplinary work combines areas of study in history, memory studies, and Holocaust studies.

Giorgia's current publications include: "Mussolini and the Jews: What Inspired Fascist Antisemitic Policy in Italy?" in Plvs Vltra (2018), "Honouring Carl Lutz: Reflecting on the Memorialization of a Forgotten Hero" in Their Trace (2020), “Polish Collaboration and Contemporary Memory Polemics: Addressing the 'Polocaust’ Myth” in Verges (2020), and “History Does Not Stand Still: How a New VHEC Workshop Addresses Antisemitism, Hatred, and Propaganda” in Zachor (2021). 

Caitlin Burrit, MA, Holocaust Studies

After completing her BA in Germanic Studies at the University of Victoria, Caitlin moved to Dresden, Germany in 2015. Living and teaching in Dresden inspired her Master’s project, a graphic novel focusing on the relationship between Holocaust memory in Dresden and the city’s response to the Refuge Crisis of 2015. Over the summer she completed the I-witness Holocaust Field School program, as well as a research practicum at the Ravensbrück Memorial where she studied artwork made by the prisoners of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. 

Her final MA thesis project is entitled "We Are Harmless: An Arts-Based Autoethnographic Graphic Novel on Holocaust Memory in Dresden”.
 

Mikhail Busch, MA 

Braden Russell, MA, Holocaust Studies

Tessa Coutu, MA, Holocaust Studies

Tessa's thesis focused on how Holocaust education can be incorporated into the province of British Columbia’s new high school curriculum, particularly within the context of human rights and social justice education. With the B.C. curriculum’s shift from prescribed learning outcomes to concept-based and competency-driven learning, educators are provided with autonomy to teach about the Holocaust outside of History 12. As a Métis student, Tessa would like to incorporate Canada’s treatment of its indigenous people into her work. Without comparing, she hopes to bring students’ attention to the lasting effects traumatic pasts can have. As part of her program, she completed a co-op at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, which solidified her view on the importance of bringing Holocaust education into B.C. schools.

Davjola's research paper focused on "German National Socialist Black Metal: Contemporary Neo-Nazism and the On-Going Struggle with Antisemitism” and the role of music in extreme-right movements in Europe. She studied the official opposition party in German Parliament - the Alternative for Germany (AfD) - and how they are frequently accused of racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic and xenophobic attitudes and behaviours, with links to far-right movements and extremist groups. She explored how music plays a crucial role in broadening and strengthening support for the AfD and other far-right political movements through politicized anthems being feature prominently at rallies and other sponsored gatherings.

Davjola also presented her research in a lecture on National Socialist Black Metal, a sub-genre of Black Metal, and its role in the promotion of National Socialism in modern Germany.