Irit Dekel

I am interested in the relations between collective memory, media and the public sphere. My work has focused on Holocaust memorialization and the representation of ethnic and religious difference in contemporary Germany, using ethnography as well as discourse analysis.

Museums have been a site for my research: I co-led a comparative research project on the representation and experience of home in Home Museums in Germany and Israel. This study focused on atmosphere and temporality, the presentation of gender differences, and mediating techniques of tour guides. I have written on the Anti-War Museum in Berlin within an ongoing interest in memories of non-violent struggles and activism.

My first book, Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin analyzed how various groups mediate their experience in the Holocaust Memorial, performing a moral transformation around how they relate to Holocaust memory and recent German history. I argued that visitors reflect on and negotiate the modes in which they are expected to engage with those memories along with questions of citizenship and belonging of Jews and other minorities to the German society.

My research has additionally raised questions on the intersection of nationalism and pluralism. I have studied the Circumcision Debate in Germany and Israelis in Berlin.

My current research focuses on philosemitism in contemporary Germany. Philosemitism engages images and ideas that are interwoven in larger cultural self-understandings. Studying philosemitism is for me a lens through which to observe both local debates over antisemitism as well as to shed light on our larger understanding of social, national and post national projects of exclusion and inclusion.