Meet the Team
Lovro Kralj
Lovro Kralj is a research and teaching assistant at the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He has a PhD in history from the Central European University Budapest/Vienna. His dissertation revolved around anti-semitism in the Ustaša movement and the implementation of the Holocaust in the towns of Osijek, Sarajevo, and Križevci.
Emil Kjerte
Emil Kjerte has a PhD in History from Clark University, Massachusetts, an MA in Holocaust in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Uppsala University, and a BA in History from the University of Copenhagen. Bringing together his research interests in concentration camps and non-German Holocaust perpetrators, Kjerte’s doctoral dissertation examines the guards stationed at Jasenovac, the largest concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. The dissertation explores the guards’ backgrounds, the social dynamics of their crimes, their sense of community, and their interactions with family members and civilians living near the camp. His current research shifts attention toward the experiences of prisoners in the concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia, with a particular focus on survival strategies and forms of solidarity among inmates.
Danijel Matijevic
Danijel Matijević has a PhD in History and Jewish Studies from the University of Toronto. His dissertation, titled Ustašism as Ideology and Practice: Mass Violence and Entwined Genocides in Vukovar District, Croatia, 1939-1945, dissects the evolution of Ustašism—the ideology of the Ustaša movement—and the dynamics of Ustaša campaigns of genocide and mass violence in the context of Ustašist ideological dissemination in local communities, with the city of Vukovar as a microhistorical case-study. Currently, he is Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Research in Southeast Europe at the University of Rijeka, Croatia, and YUFE4-MSCA Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE) Alliance and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) based at the University of Rijeka and Maastricht University.