The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism is a centre of innovative research and teaching on antisemitism, racialization and religious intolerance. It contributes to knowledge and understanding, policy formation and public debate.
Latest Update: Welcome to the website of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, formerly the Pears Institute.
The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (formerly the Pears Institute), was established in 2010 by Birkbeck, University of London and Pears Foundation.
Our founding principle informs our vision and our work: that the study of antisemitism is vital to understanding other forms of racialization, racism and religious intolerance.
We are an internationally recognized centre for innovative research and teaching.
Our scholarship contributes to public debate on antisemitism, racialization and religious intolerance and we provide expertise and advice to a wide range of institutions in the UK, Europe and the wider world.
The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism is both independent and inclusive.
Forty years after the first edition of Martin Gilbert’s ‘Atlas of the Holocaust’ was published. Professor Cole examines four decades of mapping the Holocaust in the analogue and digital age. He also poses a broader question: why should historians and the wider public concern themselves with mapping the past?
In contemporary Britain, the relationship between public Holocaust memory and discussion of the State of Israel is both sensitive and complex. In this talk David Tollerton will discuss a too-often unacknowledged aspect of the Holocaust’s legacy in 21st century Britain.
What connects a playwright, an Indie rocker and a QC? All three have failed to see racist stereotypes and conspiracy theories staring them in the face.
David Feldman and Yair Wallach reflect on the reservoir of antisemitism in UK public discourse, and consider why definitions alone are not enough.
In the last several years, episodes of anti-Jewish violence in the United States have prompted scholars to rethink traditional models for understanding anti-Jewish bigotry, discrimination, and violence in the country. In this seminar, Britt Tevis will address the intellectual history of how scholars have traditionally conceptualized antisemitism in the U.S. and offer alternative frameworks.
This edited volume charts the performative dimension of Holocaust memorialization through a selection of artistic, educational, and memorial projects. It explores how performative practices came into being, what impact they exert upon audiences, and how researchers can conceptualise and understand their relevance.
This book offers a profoundly new picture of the role that Zionism played in East-Central European communities during the First World War and a new interpretation of Zionism’s breakthrough as a key social and political movement in the region. It also makes fresh contributions to the understanding of relations between Empire and nation and the development of post-war violence in East-Central Europe.
To mark the postponed seventh international multidisciplinary conference, Beyond Camps and Forced Labour, this virtual symposium will explore new international debates in Holocaust memorialisation.
We build alliances to promote knowledge and share understanding, making our work ever-more relevant in a world threatened by populisms and conspiracy theories from the political left and right
Professor David Feldman, Director
