Olaf Jensen

Olaf Jensen studied Social Sciences (Political Science, Sociology and Social Psychology) at the University of Hanover. He graduated in 1999 in Social Sciences, having successfully participated in the research project ‘Traditions of Historical Consciousness’ at the Department of Psychology with a thesis on National Socialism as Family-History (awarded with the Christian-Kuhlemann-Prize, University of Hanover). In 2000/2001 he received a PhD Scholarship from the University of Hanover; from 2001 to 2005 he was Research Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Memory Research (CMR) at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (KWI), Essen, in different interdisciplinary research projects on autobiographical memory and historical consciousness.

PhD (University of Hanover) in 2004 with the thesis ‘Geschichte machen. Strukturmerkmale des intergenerationellen Sprechens über die NS-Vergangenheit in deutschen Familien’ (Making History: Structure-Types of Intergenerational Conversation About National Socialism in German Families). Tübingen: edition diskord.

Since October 2005 he is Lecturer in Holocaust Studies and Deputy Director of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust Studies, School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester (UK).

His research so far has focused on National Socialism and the Holocaust and intersects Oral History with Social Psychology. It centres on the impact of memory on contemporary German society and he is particularly interested in the transmission of Germany’s past from one generation to the next.