Am Planetarium 7 | 07743 Jena
Phone: +49 (0) 3641 9 44070
Mail: alexa[dot]stiller[at]hist[dot]uzh[dot]ch
Dr. Alexa Stiller is Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary History at the Department of History at the University of Zurich. She has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York City, the University of Oxford, St. Antony's College, ETH Zurich, and the University of Konstanz. She has received fellowships from the USHMM, the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, and the German Historical Institutes in Washington D.C. and Warsaw. Alexa Stiller's most recent award-winning book deals with the Nazi policy of Germanization and mass violence in the occupied countries of Poland, France, and Slovenia (Göttingen 2022). She has researched and published on the Nuremberg Trials (New York 2012, Hamburg 2018). Her current research project (working title: Visions of Accountability. The Emergence of the International Criminal Law Regime, 1989-2002) examines the establishment of the international criminal tribunals in response to the Bosnian War and the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s.
The long 1990s were the golden decade for international criminal law: 45 years after the two International Military Tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo, the two ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as the permanent International Criminal Court, were established in The Hague and Arusha. What historical circumstances and factors led to the emergence of the international criminal law regime? Which groups of actors were involved? The research project assumes that the international criminal law regime was actively created by different groups of actors. Lawyers, human rights activists, international organizations, and various governments around the world were involved. It examines the different interests and alliances of the various actors. It argues that a new and powerful discourse emerged in the early 1990s, referred to as the "vision of accountability". It was based on the idea of prosecuting past injustices, gross violations of human rights, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide, punishing the perpetrators and providing justice to the victims. This new discourse led to a new way of looking at mass violence and international law, and to a new way of dealing with wars and civil wars at the international level. New instruments and institutions were created, including the establishment of international criminal courts. The aim of this research project is to re-evaluate the emergence and institutionalization of the ad hoc tribunals and the permanent International Criminal Court through a comprehensive historical contextualization and historicization.
Völkische Politik: Praktiken der Exklusion und Inklusion in polnischen, französischen und slowenischen Annexionsgebieten 1939-1945 [Völkisch Policy: Practices of Exclusion and Inclusion in the Annexed Territories of Poland, France, and Slovenia 1939-1945], 2 Vols., Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2022.
NMT. Die Nürnberger Militärtribunale zwischen Geschichte, Gerechtigkeit und Rechtschöpfung [NMT. The Nuremberg Military Tribunals between History, Justice, and Law], Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 20182, co-edited and introduced with Kim C. Priemel.
Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography, Oxford/New York: Berghahn Books, 2012, co-edited and introduced with Kim C. Priemel.
Nationalsozialistische Lager. Neue Beiträge zur NS-Verfolgungs- und Vernichtungspolitik und zur Gedenkstättenpädagogik [Nazi Camps. New Contributions to the Nazi Persecution and Extermination Policy and to Memorial Education], Münster: Klemm & Oehlschläger, 2006, co-edited and introduced with Akim Jah, Christoph Kopke, and Alexander Korb.
“Accountability: l’essor d’un concept politique dans l’histoire des relations internationales,” Relations internationales (2025), No 200 (forthcoming).
“Raumplanung und Gewalt: ‚eingegliederte Ostgebiet‘, Generalgouvernement, besetzte sowjetische Gebiete [Spatial Planning and Violence: Incorporated Eastern Territory, General Government, Occupied Soviet Territories],”in: Planen und Bauen im Nationalsozialismus: Voraussetzungen, Institutionen, Wirkungen, ed. by Wolfgang Benz et al, 4 Vols., Hirmer: Munich 2023, 324-429(with Karl R. Kegler).
“The Genesis of the Human Rights-Based International Criminal Justice System. The Hidden Significance of the First Iraq War,” in: Embattled Visions. Human Rights since 1990, ed. by Jan Eckel and Daniel Stahl. Göttingen: Wallstein 2022, 123-40.
“Völkisch Capitalism: Himmler’s Bankers and the Continuity of Capitalist Thinking and Practice in Germany,” in: Reshaping Capitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany, ed. by Moritz Föllmer and Pamela E. Swett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2022, 278-304.
“The Mass Murder of the European Jews and the Concept of ‘Genocide’ in the Nuremberg Trials: Reassessing Raphael Lemkin’s Impact,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 13 (2019), 1: 144-72, URL: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol13/iss1/14/
“On the Margins of Volksgemeinschaft: Criteria for Belonging to the Volk within the Nazi Germanization Policy in the Annexed Territories, 1939-1945,” in: Heimat, Region, and Empire: New Approaches to Spatial Identities in National Socialist Germany, ed. byClaus-Christian W. Szejnmann and Maiken Umbach, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 239-55.
“Semantics of Extermination. The Use of the New Term of Genocide in the Nuremberg Trials and the Genesis of a Master Narrative,” in: Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography, ed. by Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller, Oxford/New York: Berghahn Books, 2012, 104-33.
“Stalin’s Creation & Jackson’s Contribution. Soviet Performance at the Nuremberg Trial”, featured review of Hirsch, Francine, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg. A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020, in: The American Historical Review 128 (2023), 1: S. 409-413, https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/128/1/409/7098189?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Pendas, Devin O., Democracy, Nazi Trials, and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945-1950, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, in: German History (May 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghad027
Lindner, Stephan H., Aufrüstung – Ausbeutung – Auschwitz. Eine Geschichte des I.G.-Farben-Prozesses, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2020, in: Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 110 (2023), 2: S. 277f.
Schwarz, Ethnische „Säuberungen“ in der Moderne. Globale Wechselwirkungen nationalistischer und rassistischer Gewaltpolitik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, München: Oldenbourg, 2013, in: WerkstattGeschichte (2016), Heft 72, S. 113-116, https://werkstattgeschichte.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/WG72_113-116_STILLER_MODERNE.pdf
Heller, Kevin Jon, The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of the International Criminal Law, in: European Journal of International Law: Talk! 02.11.2011, https://www.ejiltalk.org/discussing-heller%E2%80%99s-the-nuremberg-military-tribunals-and-the-origins-of-the-international-criminal-law/
Please find more information on Alexa Stiller's website at the University of Zurich.