Natalie Bernstein Awarded 2025-2026 Greenberg Research Fellowship

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research has awarded the 2025–2026 Greenberg Research Fellowship to Natalie Bernstein, a PhD candidate in Modern Jewish History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In her doctoral research, she explores the intersections of Holocaust history, colonialism, and refugee movement in the unique geopolitical space of Tangier during World War II. She investigates how Tangier’s status as an international city facilitated the settlement of European Jewish refugees in Morocco. It is estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 Jews fled to Tangier, among them Ashkenazi Jews mostly from Hungary and Poland, and Sephardic Jews from Italy. She analyzes how the Spanish occupation of Tangier during World War II and Spain’s goal of appearing neutral affected Jewish refugees. She examines how European Jewish refugees and Moroccans experienced the supposed freedom and flexibility of the International Zone and how these communities interacted on the ground.

As the Greenberg Research Fellow, Bernstein will conduct research in the Visual History Archive to explore testimonies of Jewish Holocaust refugees in Tangier and Morocco. These sources, she notes, are especially valuable given the scarcity of firsthand accounts of life in North Africa during the war.

Her dissertation contributes to an emerging body of scholarship that expands Holocaust Studies beyond Europe, focusing instead on North Africa. Bernstein’s research bridges the fields of Holocaust Studies, Middle East and North African Studies, and Jewish Studies. Her work illuminates underexamined refugee networks and intercultural encounters in a region critical to understanding the global dimensions of the Holocaust.

Natalie Bernstein holds a C.Phil. and M.A. in History from UCLA, and a B.A. in International Relations and Global Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. In her undergraduate career, she lived in Meknes, Morocco as part of the Arabic Overseas Flagship Program Capstone Program. She also worked as a Fulbright Research Scholar in Casablanca, Morocco. She has earned fellowships from the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, the Skirball Cultural Center, and she is currently based in Tangier, Morocco as a research fellow with the American Institute for Maghrib Studies.

The first endowed fellowship established at the Center in 2014, the Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship is awarded annually to an outstanding advanced-standing Ph.D. candidate from any discipline and anywhere in the world for dissertation research focused on testimony from the Visual History Archive and related unique USC research resources. The fellowship enables the recipient to spend one month in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research during the academic year and to deliver a public lecture about their research. Read more about past Greenberg Research Fellows here.