Tom Vanassche

Dr. Tom Vanassche is a researcher at the Institute for Germanistic and General Literary Studies (RWTH Aachen University), specializing in European-Jewish Literary and Cultural History. His work bridges Holocaust Studies, Memory Studies, and Emotion History, with a focus on affective ruptures in Shoah literature.

• Education: PhD in German Literature (RWTH Aachen, 2021, summa cum laude); MA in German Studies, Comparative Literature, and European Studies (Ghent University, King’s College London).

His research explores German-Jewish literature across centuries, documentary forms, Romanticism, and intersections of ecocriticism with migration narratives. Recent publications analyze pathos in Holocaust historiography and transnational memory frameworks.

Key trends in his 15 most recent articles include:

• Memory processes in postwar German writing
• Interactions between factuality and fictionality in Shoah narratives
• Documentary aesthetics in contemporary literature
• Emotional rhetorics in trauma discourse
• Transnational memory politics
• Borderland epistemologies in Eastern European studies

• Scientific Awards: Prix de la Fondation Auschwitz (2020-2021) for dissertation excellence.

Vanassche co-organized workshops on co-memoration and post-war reconciliation, supported by grants including DAAD Strategic Partnership U4 Network and TORCH travel funding. His monograph Pathos and Anti-Pathos (De Gruyter, 2023) and editorial contributions to journals like PhiN have advanced interdisciplinary Holocaust scholarship.