Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies

The Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies (IHGMS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a locus for research and teaching on the Holocaust, genocides, and events of mass violence as well as on the memory and representation of these historical occurrences.

Now housed near the center of campus in a graceful 1929 Tudor-style house, with an attached lecture and exhibition hall, the Institute’s principal activities include: teaching and research, conferences and workshops, public events and lectures, and visits to the permanent exhibition.

Reflecting the critical mass of UMass Amherst faculty and graduate students doing work in Holocaust, genocide, mass violence, and cultural memory studies, the great strength and unusual prominence of the faculty’s research, and the enormous public and topical interest in related areas, the Institute brings together scholars of various fields and disciplines, doing local as well as national and global work, on history and memory, perpetrators and victims, as well as the aftermath of violence and human rights. Interdisciplinary and intellectually broad, the Institute is a locus for critical thinking.