June 4, 2020
Caroline Mezger (MA 2012) is a historian at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich. She holds degrees in history from Yale University (BA, 2010) and Central European University (MA, 2012), as well as a PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute in Florence (2016). Her research focuses on the twentieth-century history of Central and Southeastern Europe, World War II and the Holocaust, borderland minorities, migration, communication, and the history of childhood and youth. She is co-editor of the volume "The Holocaust in the Borderlands: Interethnic Relations and the Dynamics of Violence in Occupied Eastern Europe," European Holocaust Studies, Vol. 2 (2019) and author of the book Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Since June 2019, she has led the international, Leibniz Association-funded project "'Man hört, man spricht': Informal Communication and Information 'From Below' in Nazi Europe" (INFOCOM), of which CEU is a cooperation partner.
"My time at CEU was central to my development as a historian. The History Department's two-year MA program opened entirely new avenues of research to me, honed my skills as an academic, and ignited a life-long interest in the fascinating histories of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Furthermore, even years after graduating, the CEU community continues to act as a great source of friendship, support, and inspiration, for which I am sincerely grateful."