UVA Jewish Studies Appoints Caroline Sturdy Colls as Inaugural Chair in Holocaust Studies

UVA Jewish Studies is pleased to announce that Caroline Sturdy Colls will assume the newly established Donald Black Chair in Holocaust Studies beginning in August of 2027. Dr. Sturdy Colls is currently Professor of Holocaust Archaeology and Genocide Investigation and Director of the Centre of Archaeology at the University of Huddersfield. She has pioneered the application of interdisciplinary approaches to the investigation of Holocaust landscapes and ethically driven investigations of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and missing persons cases.

 

As part of this research, Dr. Sturdy Colls has completed archaeological surveys at more than 60 Holocaust sites, most recently as the Principal Investigator for the project: "Trawniki: Nexus of the Final Solution," funded by Claims Conference. Earlier this year, she published a major monograph entitled, Finding Treblinka: Forensic and Archaeological Discoveries with Cornell University Press and with the support of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and Claims Conference. Her research has received international media attention via television documentaries and radio programs aired in Europe and the US, and she has held several visiting fellowships around the world, including the Ina Levine Invitational Fellow for the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center at the USHMM. She is also the recipient of the world’s largest history prize—the Dan David Prize (2025)—the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Lucy Mair Medal (2025), and the European Archaeological Heritage Prize (2016).

 

By appointing Dr. Sturdy Colls as the inaugural Donald Black Chair in Holocaust Studies, UVA Jewish Studies hopes to expand its engagement in the field of Holocaust Archaeology. If you'd like to learn more about her work—particularly her halachically observant investigations of mass graves and former camps using non-invasive methods—you can watch her Dan David Prize interview.