Danielle Willard-Kyle is a PhD candidate in History at Rutgers University. She earned her BA in History from Westmont College, an MA in History and Jewish Studies from the University of Toronto, and an MSt in Jewish Studies from Oxford University before coming to Rutgers. As a graduate student in the History Department specializing in Modern Europe, Willard-Kyle is interested in the intersection of postwar testimonies from European and North African Jewish refugees, and in the ways this research can connect to current events in immigration. She has given presentations on her research at multiple academic conferences and has received numerous awards and scholarships, including the 2017 Ben and Zelda Cohen Visiting Fellowship at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., a 2015 Mellon Summer Research Grant and the 2013-2014 Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies Fellowship.

During her time at the Center, Willard-Kyle conducted research with Visual History Archive testimonies of European and North African Jewish refugees who lived in Italian Displaced Persons (DP) camps during and after World War II in order to understand the “tension between past and present questioning of the roles of memory and nostalgia in describing one’s own experiences.” She was specifically interested in how individuals remember their time in Italian DP camps from the immediate post-camp period to the present.