About
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. He received his PhD in History from the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill where he worked under the direction of Christopher Browning. His first book examined the complicity of the German Army in the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, focusing on ground level participation. That book, Marching Into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus (Harvard University Press) won the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize for best first book from Harvard Press. The book also received the Honorable Mention for the Sybil Milton Memorial Book Prize for books on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust from the German Studies Association. 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, tentatively entitled Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv. His next research project is The Revenants: The Postwar Lives of Nazi Perpetrators.
Dr. Beorn has published work in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Central European History, German Studies Review, Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Politics 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.
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As a member of an interdisciplinary group, Holocaust Geographies, which explores the spatial dynamics of the Holocaust, Dr. Beorn was a co-recipient of a National Science Foundation grant. This group has written an edited volume, Geographies of the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 2018.) This is the first book to address the analysis of Holocaust spaces with GIS. He is also active in the digital humanities. He is currently working on several DH projects including a digital reconstruction of the Janowska camp and a social network analysis of its perpetrators.
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As a public-facing scholar, Dr. Beorn has published pieces in the Washington Post, New Republic, Hyperallergic, and The Forward. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Richard French Live on WRNN, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and TRT. He is an active contributor to public history and engagement on Twitter as well. He is also the host of The Holocaust History Podcast.
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Dr. Beorn teaches courses in Holocaust History, Comparative Genocide, German history, Eastern European history, Antisemitism, Modern European history, Jewish history, Historical Methodology, Public history, and Digital history. He is also the Scholar-in-Residence for the Auschwitz Jewish Center’s American Service Academy Program where he instructs service academy cadets in military ethical decision-making using the Holocaust. Dr. Beorn’s work also forms the basis for the Ordinary Soldiers lesson program used by ROTC and the US Army.
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He lives in Newcastle with his Springer Spaniel, Puck and enjoys playing the violin and painting small Napoleonic figures. He supports Arsenal and, of course, Newcastle United. Dr. Beorn is represented by Joelle Delbourgo at Joelle Delbourgo Literary Associates.
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