Staff profile

Dr Larissa Allwork


Associate Professor in History and Impact

Larissa wearing a blue shirt at the University of Derby

Subject

Research

Research centre

Identity, Culture and Representation Research Centre

ORCiD ID

0000-0003-2301-7668

Campus

Kedleston Road, Derby Campus

Email

L.Allwork@derby.ac.uk

About

I am an Associate Professor in History and Impact based in the University Research and Knowledge Exchange Office (URKEO) at the University of Derby. I lead the Derby Impact Collaboration and Engagement (DICE) Network. I have worked extensively on the Higher Education impact and public engagement agendas. At Derby, I co-ordinated the Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF 2021) submission; wrote the public and community engagement statement for the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) and I am co-leading the University's National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) Watermark submission. I also continue my own research into how the public engages with difficult histories.

Research interests

My research investigates how public institutions and societies deal with difficult, provocative or traumatic histories. My doctoral research and first book (Holocaust Remembrance between the National and the Transnational) considered how British trends in Holocaust memorialisation have influenced or intersected with European networks of commemorative activity such as the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust (2000) and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. My published research in this area includes papers on Holocaust education and anti-Semitism as well as the compilation of an edited collection with Dr Rachel Pistol on the life and works of Holocaust historian and public intellectual, Professor David Cesarani OBE.

In recent years, my research has diversified to consider how UK audiences have engaged with and remembered difficult, or provocative histories of conflict, imperialism, migration, imprisonment, enforced displacement and/or genocide. These considerations have related to understanding diasporic constructions of home and belonging (CoHaB ITN, 2012-2015), marginalised histories of the First World War, including lesser-known traumatic histories (AHRC Centre for Hidden Histories, 2016-2017; 2018-2019) and the eighteenth and nineteenth-century British punishment of transportation and issues of frontier violence and genocide in the Australian context (AHRC Digital Panopticon, 2017-2018; ‘Criminal Lives’ exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archives, 2017-2018).

Recent publications

Membership of professional bodies

Qualifications

Arrival of women and children at Auschwitz Birkenau in May 1944

Dr Larissa Allwork, Researcher at the University of Derby, examines how powerful the message of Holocaust remembrance is in today's society.