Elisabeth Gallas

Dr. Elisabeth Gallas is Deputy Director and Head of the Research Department 'Law' at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow (Dubnow-Institut) in Leipzig, Germany. She holds a PhD from the University of Leipzig and has held prestigious fellowships including Minerva Research Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.

Her research focuses on:

• Jewish cultural restitution after the Holocaust
• 20th-century Jewish legal history
• Memory studies and Holocaust historiography
• Postwar Jewish intellectual networks
• Transnational approaches to justice and human rights

Gallas's publications demonstrate a consistent focus on reconstructing Jewish intellectual and material heritage after catastrophe. Her work spans cultural restitution, legal history, and memory politics, with recent articles examining linguistic legacy, artistic responses to trauma, and methodologies in Holocaust documentation. She frequently employs transnational frameworks to analyze Jewish responses to persecution.

Awards recognizing her scholarly impact include:

• Förderpreis Geisteswissenschaften International (2015)
• 69th National Jewish Book Award

As Principal Investigator for the DFG-funded International Research Training Group Belongings: Jewish Material Culture in Twentieth-Century Europe and Beyond, she supervises doctoral candidates in collaboration with Leipzig University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She also serves on academic committees including the International Advisory Board of the Wiener Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies.