USC Professor of History Wolf Gruner directs USC Dornsife Center for Advance Genocide Research and sets its research agenda. Gruner also holds the Shapell- Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies at the university. An internationally recognized expert on genocide, Gruner has published 10 books and numerous articles on the Holocaust in Europe as well as on mass violence against indigenous people in Latin America.
Kátia Lerner worked as interviewer and Regional Assistant Coordinator for USC Shoah Foundation in Rio de Janeiro from 1996 to 1999. After that period, she continued her work as liaison until 2012. Katia received an MA in Social Communication and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, both at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her thesis analyzes the process of shaping the memory of the Holocaust taking as object of study the then called Survivors of the Holocaust Visual History Foundation (from 1994 to 2001).
Jeannie Woods is a seventh and eighth grade language arts teacher at Fort Payne Middle School in Fort Payne, Alabama. Woods was one of the 25 educators who participated in the Auschwitz: The Past is Present professional development program in January 2015.
Robert Hadley taught high school for nearly 20 years before coming to the USC Shoah Foundation as a Regional Consultant earlier this year. He conducts teacher training on using IWitness in the classroom all around the country with a focus on the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. He is also very involved in social justice issue locally in Portland, Oregon and teacher training internationally.
USC Shoah Foundation archivist Sandra Aguilar interprets and formats information and details about the interviewees and the interviews to be brought into the database systems of the Visual History Archive. She is also a liaison between USC Shoah Foundation’s research specialists and database programmers to develop ways for the testimonies to be searched and experienced.
Muscologist Matt Lawson recently submitted his PhD thesis, focussing on the music used in German depictions of the Holocaust on screen. His early research has been disseminated at conferences across the UK, and also at international events in Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Germany and the USA. He completed his undergraduate honours degree in Music at Huddersfield in 2009, and his MA with distinction from the University of York (2012).
Keith Stringfellow teaches American History, World History, and English at Charlotte Islamic Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina. Stringfellow has been teaching for nine years and was named Business and Finance High School's Teacher of the Year in 2010.
Thom Melcher, the managing director of the Glenmede Trust Company, co-chairs USC Shoah Foundation's Next Generation Council.
USC Shoah Foundation’s liaison in Poland, Monika Koszyńska coordinates the Visual History Archive access sites in Poland; represents the Institute at conferences and seminars; organizes the Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century training program for Polish educators; and coordinates fundraising and other outreach efforts. She is also on the staff of the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews’ education department, a Visual History Archive Access Site.
Sarah Griffitts is a social studies high school teacher at the Calgary Board of Education in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She received a BA in History at Mount Royal College and an MA in History from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Her master’s thesis focused on the establishment of Chelmno and Sobibor through the path of the Einsatzgruppen.