Education

B.A., History, University of Wyoming, 2009

M.A., History, University of Wyoming, 2012

Ph.D., History, West Virginia University, 2019

Bio

Nerissa Aksamit is a social and cultural historian of modern European history with a specialization in twentieth-century war and society. Her primary research interests are the transnational dimensions and impacts of the Second World War on societies and institutions in Britain and Germany. Aksamit is currently working on a manuscript based on her doctoral dissertation, “Training Friends and Overseas Relief: The Friends Ambulance Unit and the Friends Relief Service, 1939 to 1948.” This project is a transnational study of two British Quaker voluntary organizations and their humanitarian work in Germany among refugees, displaced persons, and ethnic Germans during and after the Second World War. She is also working on a project for the “The Red Cross Movement: Voluntary Organisations and Reconstruction in Western Europe in the 20th century” symposium at the Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po in Paris, France. Her contribution, “Reconciliation: From Mount Waltham to the British Occupation Zone, 1943-1948,”is an examination of the opportunities and limitations of the British Friends Relief Service in their relief efforts concerning spiritual rehabilitation and international reconciliation in the British Occupation Zone in Germany.

Aksamit joined the History Department at St. Joseph’s University, New York in 2021. She offers survey courses in Western Civilization as well as specialized courses on the period from 1914 to 1945, gender and modern war, and public history and war commemoration in modern Europe.