Uğur Ümit Üngör (born inErzincan, 1980) is a Dutch–Turkishacademic,historian,sociologist, andprofessor ofgenocide studies, specializing as a scholar and researcher ofHolocaust studies and studies onmass violence. He served as Professor of History at theUtrecht University and Professor of Sociology at theNIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Üngör, who was born inErzincan,Turkey and raised inEnschede,the Netherlands,[1][2] earned adoctorate from theUniversity of Amsterdam in 2009,[3] and taught history at theUtrecht University and sociology at theNIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam.[4] Üngör was Lecturer in International History at theUniversity of Sheffield 2008–2009, then Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for War Studies at theUniversity College Dublin in 2009–2010.[5] Since February 2020, he has been Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam.
He has published widely in the field of mass violence and genocide studies, in particular thelate Ottoman genocides, theArmenian genocide, and theRwandan genocide. Üngör's book based on his dissertation,The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-50 (Oxford University Press, 2011), was the winner of theErasmus Prize by thePraemium Erasmianum Foundation in 2010,[6] and of the Keetje Hodshon Prize awarded by theRoyal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities in 2013.[7] In 2012, Üngör was awarded the Heineken Young Scientist Award in History by theRoyal Dutch Academy of Sciences.[8]
He and Alexander Goekjian, who also wrote the screenplay and directed, are featured in the documentaryThe Land of Our Grandparents,[9] which was shown on Dutch public television on 24 April 2008, and was awarded the prize for best documentary at the Pomegranate Film Festival in Toronto that year.[3] Üngör also co-wroteConfiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property in 2011. His most recent work,De Syrische Goelag: Assads Gevangenissen, 1970–2020, was published in 2022 and focused on the dynamics of paramilitary violence in theSyrian civil war, notably on theTadamon massacre.
