Female STEM Pioneers Who Survived the Holocaust
Victoria Van Orden Martínez in conversation with Julia Englander
Join us for a conversation about Female STEM Pioneers Who Survived the Holocaust. The book tells the stories of six women who survived the Holocaust and went on to make important contributions to science and medicine. Their journeys reveal the many challenges they faced, from Nazi persecution and the trauma of war to institutional barriers in male-dominated scientific fields.
Among them are Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini, internationally renowned cancer researcher Eva Klein, and Halina Neujahr, the first woman in Sweden to earn a Doctor of Technology degree in Chemistry, whose pioneering work helped shape their fields. The book also brings attention to three lesser-known scientists, exploring their experiences during the Second World War and the Holocaust and their journeys as refugees and migrants rebuilding their lives in the United States, Canada, and Sweden.
Through these remarkable stories, Dr. Martínez highlights not only the women’s scientific achievements but also the resilience, determination, and sacrifices behind them.
Dr. Julia Englander will lead the conversation with the author.
About the Speakers:
Victoria Van Orden Martínez, Ph.D. is a researcher in the Department of History at Lund University in Sweden, where she is associated with the North European Center for Research on Antisemitism and the Holocaust (NORAH). Victoria is also a Non-Residential Fellow of the USC Shoah Foundation and the Editor-in-Chief of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, published by SAGE. She has been researching and writing about women and other previously overlooked figures and aspects of history for over twenty years. She has maintained a successful blog, A Bit of History, since 2017, and earned her PhD in History in early 2024 with her thesis, Afterlives: Jewish and Non-Jewish Polish Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden Documenting Nazi Atrocities, 1945-1946. Originally from the United States, she currently lives in Sweden with her husband, who is originally from Spain, and their two children.
Julia Englander, Ph.D. recently joined the Swedish Defence Research Agency as a researcher and is also affiliated with the Department of History at Stockholm University in Sweden. Her research focuses on political violence, persecution, and societal mobilization, particularly extremism, racism, and Holocaust and genocide studies. She also conducts policy-oriented research and has authored reports for the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) and UNHCR. She has held fellowships at Harvard University, the University of Oxford, Charles University, and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In 2025, she received the Emerging Scholar Prize from the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and in 2023, the Intercultural Scholarship Award from SWEA. She currently serves on the Early Career Editorial Board of the International Journal of Intercultural Relations.
Register
Free entrance.
The event is in English and organized by Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, Paideia folkhögskola, the Jewish Community in Stockholm and supported by Kulturrådet and Stockholms Stad.
Picture: Female STEM Pioneers Who Survived the Holocaust