Current Fellows

The project is designed as a longue durée study of extralegal detention in one country asking broader questions about the repressive potential of the modern state. It will provide, for the first time, a thorough account of civilian internment, concentration camps, and forced labor in Bulgaria during the 20th century. The research aims to challenge the basic assumptions of Bulgarian historiography about the nature of these repressive practices and institutions as unique to only totalitarian dictatorships by offering a different perspective on their origins, development, and history in Bulgarian context. Informed by the recent global turn in the study of concentration camps the project will integrate the Bulgarian case into the wider European and global perspective.

My project studies the history of war crime tribunals, established in Bulgaria after the First Word War, to trial alleged wrongdoings, committed by Bulgarian authorities against foreign nationals, both in the occupied territories and on Bulgarian soil. The project aims to fill the vacuum within the fields of Bulgarian history, European history of post-WWI order, and international history of the prosecution of war crimes, and to integrate the Bulgarian case within the broader European and global perspective. It will be based mainly upon original archival material not used by other scholars to this date. Apart from the "hard facts" the project presents a novel methodological approach to a subject that is traditionally treated only in the framework of legal and diplomatic history, and I hope it will contribute to a better understanding of military violence in the modern world.