Winner of The 2025 Lucy Mair Medal and Marsh Prize for Applied Anthropology
Professor of Holocaust Archaeology and Genocide Investigation, University of Huddersfield
Caroline Sturdy Colls is Professor of Holocaust Archaeology and Genocide Investigation and Director of the Centre of Archaeology at the University of Huddersfield. She received a PhD from the University of Birmingham for a thesis on Holocaust Archaeology: Archaeological Approaches to Landscapes of Nazi Genocide and Persecution.
Her research focuses on the application of interdisciplinary approaches to the investigation of Holocaust landscapes. As part of this research, she completed the first archaeological surveys of the former extermination camp at Treblinka (Poland), the sites pertaining to the slave labour programme in Alderney (the Channel Islands), the former Semlin Judenlager and Anhaltlager (Serbia), and killing sites in Poland and Ukraine.
She has also worked on a pilot project with the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation (UKHMF) to map the terrain of Bergen-Belsen (Germany), and was a member of the UKHMF Education Advisory Group, appointed by the UK Government from 2015-2018. In August 2015, she installed a new permanent exhibition entitled “Finding Treblinka” at the Museum of Struggle and Martyrdom in Treblinka based on the findings of her research. She is currently the Principal Investigator of three major projects focused on conflict and genocide investigation. In 2020, she was invited to deliver the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture organised by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), a highly prestigious lecture that honours excellence in research and fosters dissemination of scholarly work in Holocaust Studies.
Her research has received international media attention via television documentaries and radio programmes aired in Europe and the US. She has held visiting fellowships at Goldsmiths College, London (Forensic Architecture Project) and Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (Terrorscapes Project). She also acts as a Scientific Advisor for Kamp Westerbork, sits on the NWO Holocaust Archaeology Group ,and has acted as a Consultant for the Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation.