Introductory Panel

Chair: Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, Technical
University Berlin, History)

• François Guesnet (University College, London, History), Ulrich Baumann (Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, History), “Kristallnacht – Pogrom or State Terror? A Terminological Reflection”

Dr François Guesnet is Reader in Modern Jewish History in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University  College  London and  currently  serves  as Secretary  and  Director  of  the European  Association  for  Jewish  Studies.  He  holds  a PhD  in  Modern  History  from  Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg  im  Breisgau,  and specializes  in  the  early  modern  and  19th  century  history  of Eastern  European,  and more  specifically,  Polish  Jews.  He  is  co-chair  of  the  editorial  board  of  Polin:  Studies  in  Polish  Jewry. He  has held  research  and  teaching  fellowships  at  the  Hebrew  University Jerusalem,  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  (Philadelphia),  the  University  of  Oxford, Dartmouth  College  and  the  Jagiellonian  University (Kraków).  His book  publications  include Polnische  Juden  im  19.  Jahrhundert: Lebensbedingungen,  Rechtsnormen  und  Organisation  im  Wandel (Böhlau-Verlag: Köln,  Wien  1998), Der  Fremde  als  Nachbar.  Polnische  Positionen  zur  jüdischen  Präsenz  in  Polen.  Texte  seit  1800 (Suhrkamp-Verlag:  Frankfurt  am  Main  2009),  and,  with  Gwenyth  Jones, Antisemitism  in  an  Era  of  Transition:  The  Case  of  Post-Communist  Eastern  Central  Europe (Frankfurt/Main:  Peter  Lang  Verlag  2014).