Victoria Martinez

PhD student

As a doctoral student in history, I research the lives of survivors of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden as refugees during and after the Second World War, with a focus on women and the role of gender and other differences.

Afterlives: Histories of Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden

My doctoral dissertation, tentatively titled Afterlives: Histories of Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden is an analysis of how survivors of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden as refugees were involved in various sociohistorical processes during the post-war period, with a focus on women and the role of gender and other differences.

The origins of my research go back to early 2017, not long after my family and I moved to Sweden, when I was working as an independent historical researcher and writer. Since then, I have researched and published articles on the experiences, lives and, in some cases, untimely deaths of survivors of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden as refugees. This work served as the foundation my work as a doctoral candidate at Linköping University, which began in the fall of 2019.

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Assignments and networks

Government inquiry

In the winter of 2019, I contributed to the Swedish government inquiry into a museum about the Holocaust in Sweden. I attended the national research seminar, but above all I was hired to write summaries of the panel discussions that took place at the international research conference organized by the inquiry. The summaries are now part of the published conference anthology, part of a Swedish Government Official Report (SOU 2020:21, Volume 2).

National Network for Holocaust Studies

I am also an active member of the national network for Holocaust Studies that was formed in 2020, where I participate in discussions about the field's past, present, and future in Sweden and beyond.

Academic Publications

I serve on the editorial board of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, a peer-reviewed journal published by SAGE journals. For two years, I was the editorial assistant for Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, a peer-reviewed journal published by Linköping University Electronic Press (LiU E-Press).

Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals

Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research

Publications

2023

Victoria Van Orden Martínez (2023) Afterlives: Jewish and Non-Jewish Polish Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden Documenting Nazi Atrocities, 1945-1946

Victoria Van Orden Martínez (2023) Witnessing the Suffering of Others in Watercolor and Pencil: Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz's Holocaust Art Exhibited in Sweden, 1945-46 Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. online advance, p. 1-21

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Victoria Van Orden Martinez (2023) Survivors of Nazi Persecution as Carriers and Cultural Translators of Knowledge in an Initiative to Document Nazi Persecution, 1945-1946

Victoria Van Orden Martinez (2023) Human Rights 'From Below': Survivors, Early Testimonies, and Restorative Justice in the Aftermath of the Second World War War, the Holocaust, and Human Rights Conference: October 11-13, 2023, The United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Hosted by the US Air Force Academy and the University of Texas at Dallas

Victoria Van Orden Martinez (2023) Beyond Flight and Rescue - Contextualizing the Holocaust through Survivors' Ongoing Survival

Guest-edited publications

Indigenous Collections: Belongings, Decolonization, Contextualization

Van Orden Martínez, Victoria; George, Heather; Sentance, Nathan mudyi; Muñoz, Adriana; Phillips Laura (eds.) (2022) Indigenous Collections: Belongings, Decolonization, Contextualization. Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals.

Research

Culture and society (Tema Q)

Tema Q/Culture and Society research environment is an interdisciplinary unit that seeks to foster a critical outlook on the multiple roles played by culture in society, in the present as well as in the past.

News

Newly recognized crossover testimonies give important knowledge of the Holocaust

A collection of Holocaust testimonies in Sweden includes cases in which Jewish and non-Jewish Polish survivors interviewed each other. A history of conflict stood between the survivors, but this does not appear to have influenced the testimonies.

Conference

I coordinated the international and interdisciplinary conference Bridging research praxes across pluralities of knowledge, April 26-28, 2022.

Interpretation of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Two hands in different colours meet.

Conference: Bridging research praxes across pluralities of knowledge

An interdisciplinary and international conference consisting of dialogues on ethics, collaboration, and knowledge production, 26-28 April, 2022.

Organisation

Division of Culture, Society, Design and Media (KSFM)

The division conducts problem-oriented cultural science research and teaching at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences.

Division of History, Arts and Religious Studies (HKR)

The division conducts research and education within the subjects of History, Arts and Religious Studies.

Department of Culture and Society (IKOS)

At the Department of Culture and Society (IKOS), social sciences and the humanities gather in environments where research and education work together.

Victoria Martinez

Afterlives: Histories of Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden

More about my research