Blaze Joel is a post-doctoral fellow in the America in the World Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated with a PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on nationalism, memory, violence, and identity in twentieth-century Europe. His first book project is titled The Last "Berlin Walls" in Europe: Conflict, Memory, and Social Division in the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country and examines how commemoration, education, and sports have worked to keep communities apart in the aftermath of inter-ethnic violence. By analyzing the process through which societies become divided and through which division is maintained after conflict, his book broadens the definition of and re-conceptualizes divided societies by focusing on the social elements.
Prior to Berkeley, Blaze graduated with a degree in History and Anthropology from Dartmouth College and earned a MA and MSc from Columbia University and the London School of Economics as part of their Dual Degree in International and World History Program. His undergraduate thesis dealt with issues of nationalism and memory in Croatia surrounding the breakup of Yugoslavia. His dissertation in the CU/LSE program looked at how the international “spotlight effect” has impacted the stark contrast in how the War in Bosnia is commemorated in Prijedor and Srebrenica, two communities in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska.
