Elisa von Joeden-Forgey

Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, PhD, is a scholar with expertise in genocide, gender, and the history of colonialism.^[1] She is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.^[2]

Education

von Joeden-Forgey holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Columbia University. She earned her Masters of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in History at the University of Pennsylvania.^[3]

Career

Founding the Lemkin Institute

During trips to Iraq in 2016 and 2017 where they met with survivors of the ISIS genocides, von Joeden-Forgey and her colleague international human rights attorney Irene Victoria Massimino, saw a need for an organization that offered direct assistance for grassroots genocide prevention to communities in crisis. These experiences prompted the two to found the Iraq Project for Genocide Prevention and Accountability in 2017.^[4] Eventually, the need to focus on grassroots genocide prevention worldwide prompted the organization to broaden its focus. To reflect this shift in mission, it was renamed as the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, honoring Raphael Lemkin.^[5]

Other Positions

Previously, she served as the endowed chair of the Holocaust & Genocide Studies Department at Keene State College.^[6] Before that, she was the Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University where she started the school's Genocide Prevention Certificate Program in 2015.^[7]

Selected Publications

• Nobody's people: Colonial subjects, race power and the German state, 1884–1945. University of Pennsylvania, 2004.
• "The devil in the details: “Life force atrocities” and the assault on the family in times of conflict." Genocide Studies and Prevention 5.1 (2010): 1-19.
• "Genocidal masculinity." New directions in genocide research. Routledge, 2012. 76-94.
• "Gender and the future of genocide studies and prevention." Genocide Studies and Prevention 7.1 (2012): 89-107.
• “Hidden in Plain Sight: Atrocity Concealment in German Political Culture Before the First World War.” in Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory, Rutgers University Press, 2014.
• "Paths Not Traveled: Genocide Prevention, the Global Grassroots, and the Power of Dialogism." Genocide Studies International 14.1, 2022: 45-64.