Dr. Laurien Vastenhout
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Biography
Laurien Vastenhout is a researcher at the NIOD and a lecturer in the Master’s programme in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her current research focuses on so-called “mixed marriages” – Jews who were married to non-Jews during the Holocaust – for which she received a VENI grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) in 2023. In 2025, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Vienna to further develop this project.
Her work explores the history of the Second World War in Western Europe, the persecution of the Jews, and the role of Jewish councils, in a comparative and transnational perspective. Her monograph Between Community and Collaboration: “Jewish Councils” in Western Europe under Nazi Occupation (Cambridge University Press) was awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research in 2023. Together with Jan Láníček, she published “Jewish Councils” in Nazi Europe, 1938–1945: A Pan-European Perspective (Wallstein Verlag, 2025).
Exhibitions and social engagement
Vastenhout contributed to exhibitions such as The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945 (National Holocaust Museum, Amsterdam; Topographie des Terrors, Berlin) and co-led the project The Second World War in One Hundred Photographs with Erik Somers. She also regularly organizes international conferences and seminars on the persecution of the Jews.
Her work has appeared in leading journals, including Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She frequently engages in public debate, for instance on the controversy surrounding the betrayal of Anne Frank. Vastenhout has held fellowships at institutions such as the Mémorial de la Shoah (Paris) and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Munich), and has received several grants and awards, including the Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies, the Sir Ian Kershaw Prize, and the KNAW Early Career Award (2025).