Kathrin Janzen

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Kathrin Janzen is a historian and doctoral candidate at the Department for Contemporary History at Vienna University. She holds a Master degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from the University of Amsterdam and a Bachelor degree in history from Humboldt-University Berlin. Furthermore, she has worked in various educational and research projects for memorial sites, including the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorial in Nordhausen and the Wannsee Conference memorial in Berlin. She is a member of the international Perpetrator Studies Network. 

Research interests: Mass violence, National Socialism and the “euthanasia” mass murder of people with disabilities. She also specialises in research on perpetration, networks within perpetrator groups and propaganda in cases of mass-violence in the 21st century.

Current research project: “Soziale Verflechtungen innerhalb eines Täterkollektivs – Familiäre und private Beziehungen zwischen Tatbeteiligten der nationalsozialistischen ‚Euthanasie‘-Morde“ (working title) 
In her dissertation project titled “Soziale Verflechtungen innerhalb eines Täterkollektivs – Familiäre und private Beziehungen zwischen Tatbeteiligten der nationalsozialistischen ‚Euthanasie‘-Morde“ (working title) she examines social structures and networks within the collective of male and female perpetrator of the National Socialist murder of people with disabilities. The project emphasises the overlapping of professional, institutional and private social relationships between the perpetrators. In her work, Kathrin Janzen analyses how those relationships have affected the organisation and execution of the mass murder, how it influenced the perpetrators’ motives and how it shaped professional and structural continuities after 1945. Furthermore, her dissertation aims to contribute to the general research of perpetrators of mass crimes.