Dr Tereza Eva Valny (PhD, MRes, BA)

Lecturer

Biography

Background

I finished my PhD at Lancaster University in 2014, after which I worked as an Associate Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University in the Department of History, Politics and Philosophy. In the summer of 2015 I moved to the Czech Republic, where I worked for Charles University and Anglo-American University as a lecturer in History. I also held an editorial position with New Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Institute of International Relations in Prague. I began my teaching fellowship at Edinburgh in September 2017 and now hold the post of Lecturer in History.  

Undergraduate teaching

  • The Era of the Witness: Trauma in Contemporary History [HIST10444]
  • The Holocaust [HIST10164]
  • Historical Skills and Methods I [HIST10426]
  • Introduction to Historiography [HIST08044]
  • Themes in Modern European History [HIST08043]

Postgraduate teaching

  • The Holocaust ODL [PGHC11466]

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I am open to supervising students working on the Holocaust and memory, or more broadly the landscape, memory and genocide studies. 

Current PhD students supervised

I am currently co-supervising a PhD student in their second year, Lilli Wolland Blomberg, working on an interdisciplinary project located in perpetrator studies and atrocity criminology.

Research summary

Places: 

  • Eastern Europe 
  • global genocide case-studies (Rwanda, Cambodia)

Themes: 

  • Genocide 
  • Holocaust 
  • Memory studies
  • Landscape 
  • Witnessing and testimony
  • the Second World War

Periods: 

  • post-SWW into the contemporary period 

Research interests

My current research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to the areas of landscape, collective memory, ethnic cleansing, genocide and commemoration. Since a significant portion of my teaching has focused on genocide, this has led to a research specialism in comparative genocide studies, particularly the themes of witnessing and reconciliation. 

Going back to my doctoral thesis, the following areas continue to be a part of my research interests: landscape and memory in Eastern Europe, especially in the context of the SWW and the Holocaust. 

Current research interests

I am in the process of working on a series of publications that consider post-genocidal trauma and reconciliation through film, landscape and memory.

Affiliated research centres

  • Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History, Edinburgh Centre for Global History

Project activity

In the summer of 2019 I conducted some fieldwork on sites of mass murder associated with the Holocaust in Poland and the Czech Republic. I have currently started working on a long-term research project which considers the intersections of tourism, daily life and memory within and around these spaces. 

For a longer period of time I have also been working on a project which explores, from a Czechoslovak/Czech perspective, the ways in which the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans is being remembered in the public sphere and in the landscape of the former Sudetenland (with a particular emphasis on northwest Bohemia).  

The list below is a subset of the information held on the University of Edinburgh PURE system, and includes Books, Chapters, Articles and Conference contributions. For a full list, including details of other publication types (e.g. reviews), please see the Edinburgh Research Explorer page for Dr Tereza Eva Valny.

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