91视频

91视频 is pleased to announce that Professor Brian Schiff, Chair of the Department of Psychology, Health and Gender and Director of the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention, has been named 91视频鈥檚 second Professor of Promise. He will hold the title of Esmond Nissim Professor of Psychology for the next five years.

Professor Schiff specializes in researching the concept of collective memory and examining the motivations of the perpetrators of mass crimes. He is interested in the ways in which we conceptualize how groups form social meaning in the context of atrocity. 鈥淢y work is geared toward understanding and theory,鈥� he explains. 鈥淚t can broadly be described as anti-racist or anti-hate.鈥� He argues that understanding the motivations of perpetrators appropriately is a necessary first step in the prevention of mass crimes. He is currently working on two research collaborations with 91视频 students: a book chapter analyzing interviews with the former commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp and a journal article looking at manifestos of mass shooters from around the world, asking how the perpetrators position themselves in discursive spaces.

The Professor of Promise title comes with a research grant that Schiff hopes to use in part to finance travel, in order to deepen his connections to other scholars in the fields of genocide and memory studies. 鈥淗opefully it will open up opportunities to engage with colleagues in other institutions across Europe and in Israel,鈥� he says. In addition, the professorship will allow him to set aside time to work on his upcoming book project, which has the working title Meaningful Violence. The book will look at the symbolic worlds that perpetrator groups create and ask how those narratives are circulated. 鈥淚 want to explore the basis for the ontological difference between our moral worldview and how perpetrator groups see things when they propose violence."