Academic advisory board

Saba-Nur Cheema (Frankfurt am Main)
Saba-Nur Cheema studied political science, history and economics at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. She was an education officer at the Anne Frank Educational Centre (Bildungsstätte Anne Frank), where she was educational director from 2015 to 2021. From 2020 to 2023, she worked on behalf of the German Bundestag in the Independent Expert Group on Muslim Hostility. Between 2016 and 2018, she was a lecturer at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences in the Department of Social Work and Health. She has been a research assistant at the Institute for General Educational Science at Goethe University since 2022.

Prof. Dr. Annette Eberle (München/Benediktbeuern), Vice chair
Annette Eberle studied modern and contemporary history, education and sociology at the University of Augsburg, and earned her doctorate in education there. She was a research associate at the Historical Institute of the University of Leipzig. Eberle’s professional activities span the areas of youth and adult education, and media, cultural and memorial site education. She is professor of education in social work at the Katholische Stiftungshochschule Munich University of Applied Sciences (Benediktbeuern campus).

Prof. Dr. Lena Foljanty (Vienna)
Lena Folianty studied law at the University of Greifswald and at the Humboldt-University in Berlin. From 2007 to 2009 she was a fellow at the International Max Planck Research School for Comparative Legal History in Frankfurt am Main, where she also earned her doctorate at the Goethe-University in 2011. In 2012 she completed her second State examination in law and became a research associate at the International Max Planck Research School for Comparative Legal History. Since 2020 Lena Foljanty is Professor for for Globalisation and Legal Pluralism at the University of Vienna.

Prof. Dr Norbert Frei (Jena)
Norbert Frei studied contemporary history, political science and communication at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and obtained his doctorate there in 1979. He earned his Habilitation from Bielefeld University in 1995. Norbert Frei served as research associate at the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich from 1979 to 1997, then chaired the department of modern and contemporary history at Ruhr University Bochum. He has been the chair of the modern and contemporary history department at Friedrich Schiller University Jena since 2005 and since 2006 head of the Jena Centre for 20th Century History.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Günther (Frankfurt am Main), chair
Klaus Günther studied philosophy and law in Frankfurt am Main. In 1983, he passed the first state law examination. From 1983 to 1996, Günther was a research associate and assistant lecturer in Frankfurt am Main, where he obtained his doctorate in 1987 and his Habilitation in 1997. Günther has been professor of theory of law, criminal law and criminal procedural law at the Institute of Criminal Justice and Philosophy of Law of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main since 1998.

Dr. Jürgen Matthäus (Washington D.C.)
Jürgen Matthäus studied history and philosophy at Ruhr University Bochum, and earned his doctorate there in 1992. From 1993 to 1994, Matthäus was senior historian at the Australian Ministry of Justice in Sydney. Since 1994, Jürgen Matthäus has worked at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he heads the research department of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.

PD Dr. Ljiljana Radonić (Vienna)
Ljiljana Radonić studied political science and philosophy as well as translation and interpreting at the University of Vienna. She completed her doctorate in 2009 and her habilitation in 2020. She has been a research associate at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2013 and Deputy Director since 2022. In 2018, she received a European Research Council Consolidator Grant and led a project from 2019 to 2024 on the topic of »Globalized Memorial Museums. Exhibiting Atrocities in the Era of Claims for Moral Universals«.

Prof. Dr. Maren Röger (Leipzig)
Maren Röger studied cultural studies, media studies and history in Lüneburg and Wrocław. She earned her doctorate from Justus Liebig University in Giessen in 2010 and was then research associate at the DHI Warsaw as well as visiting professor at the University of Hamburg. From 2015 to 2021, Röger was assistant professor and from 2021 Professor of Transnational Interrelations: Germany and Eastern Europe at the University of Augsburg. Since 2017, she also directed the Bukovina Institute there. Since 2021, Maren Röger has been Director of the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) and Professor of the History of Eastern Europe/Eastern Central Europe at the University of Leipzig.

Mag. Patrick Siegele (Bregenz)
Patrick Siegele studied German philology and musicology in Austria and Great Britain. From 2014 to 2021, he was Director of the Anne Frank Centre in Berlin, the German partner organisation of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Between 2015 and 2017, he acted as coordinator of the Independent Expert Group on Anti-Semitism on behalf of the German Bundestag. Since 2021, Patrick Siegele has been Head of the »National and International Culture of Remembrance – National Socialism and the Holocaust« division of the Central Agency for Education and Internationalisation in Austria (OeAD).

Prof. Dr. Nicholas Stargardt (Oxford)
Nicholas Stargardt studied history at Hills Road Sixth Form College of the University of Cambridge and at King’s College in Cambridge. Upon obtaining his PhD, Stargardt became a lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London in 1993. He has been professor of modern European history at Magdalen College of the University of Oxford since 1999.