Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Description

The Stanley Burton Centre is an interdisciplinary research centre located within the University of Leicester, which was established as the first research centre in a British university dedicated to the study of the Holocaust. The Centre is committed to conducting and supporting research, teaching, and learning about the Holocaust, other genocides, and related themes, such as memory studies and the history of violence. The Centre also strives to advance and disseminate knowledge and encourage reflection on these topics through regular public lectures and events.

The Holocaust was an unprecedented crime against humanity, which highlights the practical and intellectual incapacity of European cultures to prevent societies from lapsing into exclusive prejudice and apocalyptic ideology. Studying the Holocaust involves confronting issues related to society, politics, and knowledge that threaten the foundations of ordinary human existence. By negating one of the key foundations of Western reality, Judaic monotheism, they coalesce around barbarity and nihilism. The Holocaust has deeply affected modern consciousness, becoming ‘the axial event,’ and allowing humanity to learn universal lessons on civil rights, ethical duties, and the uses and abuses of human knowledge and rationality. Any society can become criminal if these standards slip and disappear, proving that racism and anti-Semitism can lead to unimaginable atrocities. Each individual has choices and is responsible for their conscience and actions.

The Stanley Burton Centre's primary objectives include conducting research into the Holocaust and related topics, fostering the study of the Holocaust and related subjects at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, promoting an understanding of these subjects amongst the general public, expanding the production of scholarly publications in these areas, creating and developing links with other institutions and individuals sharing the Centre's aims and objectives, and providing a physical location within the University of Leicester to centralize, coordinate, and develop these activities.

The Centre was founded in 1990 and re-founded under its current name in 1993 under the auspices of the Burton Trusts, with the name extended to 'Genocide Studies' in 2011. The Centre does not directly employ any staff and uses its income, derived from the original capital grant from the Burton Trusts, exclusively for the purposes outlined above.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

1990

Contact details

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University affiliation(s)

University of Leicester
Leicester