Saulius Sužiedėlis
Garbės daktaras / Honorary Doctor (Suteiktas vardas 2012-10-31)
Professor Saulius Sužiedėlis is a prominent scientist, historian, professor emeritus of history at Millersville University.
Sužiedėlis graduated from the Catholic University America in Washington D.C. in 1967, where he studied European history. After graduation, he spent a few years working as a teacher in Ethiopia as a member of the Peace Corps. In 1973, he studied Polish language and literary at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Between 1974 and 1975, he did the internship in the Institute of History at the University of Warsaw; in 1977, he received a PhD in History at the University of Kansas (USA). He studied the history of the Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle Ages and the Slavic studies.
Sužiedėlis worked in the Department of Justice of the United States, also at the radio station Voice of America, where from 1988 to 1990, he prepared historical and political programmes. Professor is a member of various scientific associations, including the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), American Historical Association, and the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS), which he managed between 2002 and 2004. Between 1994 and 1998, Sužiedėlis worked as chief editor of the scholarly quarterly the Journal of Baltic Studies. Since 1998, Sužiedėlis has been the member of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. From 2006 to 2010, he hosted Millersville University’s annual Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide.
In 2011, the Ministry of Education and Science awarded Prof. Sužiedėlis the prize for international achievements in science and collaboration with Lithuania.
Research interests of Saulius Sužiedėlis include the history of Russia, Eastern Europe, Lithuania, the Holocaust and genocide. Professor wrote and prepared five books, including Historical Dictionary of Lithuania (Scarecrow Press, 1997) which earned him the award of Choice magazine in the category of Outstanding Reference/Academic Book. In 2006, together with the historian Christoph Dieckmann, he published a historical study The Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews during Summer and Fall of 1941. Professor is the author of over 60 scientific articles, reports and reviews.
At Vytautas Magnus University, Sužiedėlis gave public lectures with a focus on the persecution and the Holocaust of Jews, development of historical consciousness of Lithuanians and emigrants, the reflection of Jewish genocide in the society, genocide in the context of global history and politics and the differences between the attitude towards genocide in Lithuania and the world.
Video records of lectures given by the professor at VMU:
