Ongoing
2026 - 2029
Julia Bezold studied history and political science at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich, complemented by two study-abroad periods in the United States and Japan.
In 2022, she was awarded the ConnSSharp Global Islamic Studies Fellowship, during which she examined the politics of memory in contemporary Turkey. Her master’s thesis investigated UWC Atlantic College in Wales as a Cold War educational project, demonstrating how an initiative originally designed in the 1960s to strengthen the Atlantic community gradually evolved into a broader programme of international understanding.
As a research associate in the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) Human Differentiation, Julia Bezold investigates self- and external categorisations of European refugees in South Asia during the 20th century. She analyses how refugees, state authorities, transnational aid organisations, and local societies negotiated status and belonging at different stages: during flight, throughout exile, and upon return or onward migration.
Through this work, Julia Bezold contributes to the CRC and the IEG by examining how self‑ and external categorisations are constituted in the context of National Socialist persecution, the Second World War, colonial rule, the Indian caste system, and national liberation movements in South Asia. The project seeks to demonstrate the significance of mobility for the production, transfer, and transformability of human categorisations.
- History of Europe in the 20th century
- History of Migration
- Post-war Societies in Europe and Japan
- Memory Cultures
