Paul R. Bartrop


Paul R. Bartrop is an Australian historian of the Holocaust and genocide. Since August 2012 he has been Professor of History and Director of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, Florida. In 2011-2012 he was the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

Education and career

Bartrop is descended from a British convict sent to Van Diemen's Land in the early 1820s, James Bartrop, and his wife Elizabeth Wright Bartrop. He is the son of Donald Anthony Bartrop and Barbara Eileen Bartrop, née Page. He attended Melbourne's La Trobe University, and received his PhD from Monash University in 1989, with a dissertation entitled Indifference and Inconvenience: Australian Government Policy toward Refugees from Nazism, 1933-1939. Across a varied academic career, he has taught at Monash University, the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Deakin University, and the University of South Australia. In 1997 he joined the teaching faculty at Melbourne's Bialik College, where he pioneered a Year 10 elective, Comparative Genocide Studies. At the time it was probably the only full-year high school course on comparative genocide anywhere in the world. At Bialik, Bartrop was the Head of the History Department, and taught subjects in History, Comparative Genocide Studies, Jewish Studies, International Studies, and Religion and Society.
Between 1998 and 2010 Bartrop was an Honorary Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University, appointed for his contributions to Jewish History and Genocide Studies. In 1996 he was a Visiting Professor in the Honors College at Virginia Commonwealth University, and in 2002 was Scholar-in-Residence at the Martin-Springer Institute for Teaching the Holocaust, Tolerance and Humanitarian Values at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff.

Recognition

In 1990 he was named an Honorary Life Member of the Jewish Museum of Australia, and between 1991 and 1993 he served as President of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies, having earlier been that organization's Vice-President. In 2008 he was conferred with the title "Friend of the Armenian Community" by the Armenian National Committee, and in 2011 received a Distinguished Service Award from Melbourne's Assyrian Community for his work in genocide awareness. In 2013 he was elected as Vice-President of the Midwest Jewish Studies Association in the United States.
In July 2010 Bartrop was named as a member of the International Council of the Austrian Service Abroad.

Publications