People in EHRI: Elske Rotteveel - EHRI Project Manager

Elske Rotteveel works as EHRI project manager at the NIOD Institute for Holocaust, War and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. She has been working for EHRI since the early summer of 2017. She is mainly active in WP1 Management, but is also in touch with the other work packages.

On a Monday morning, I typically arrive at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam just before 9am, after having bravely defied the Amsterdam traffic on my bike. My desk at the NIOD is near a window, looking out on a canal and a tree, which I enjoy seeing change through the seasons. As EHRI project manager I monitor the progress of the project, maintain the internal communication within the EHRI consortium and coordinate the reporting of the project’s outcomes to the European Commission, all of which I do from this Amsterdam desk. Besides these regular tasks, I try to handle all sorts of things that come up. If anyone is unsure of what to do about anything, I am happy to help out.

Ever since my first introduction to the topic of the Second World War, I have been interested in the history of war, violence and its aftermath on both a social and an individual level. When I graduated high school it was therefore no surprise to anyone that I began a BA in history, at the University of Amsterdam. I continued with a Research Masters in history, following courses on the Second World War and the Holocaust, the Indonesian War of independence and Genocide Studies wherever I could. One could often find me in the library of the NIOD, where I largely wrote my thesis on the drastic prison reforms that took place in the Netherlands in the aftermath of World War II. With the final pages of my thesis in sight in the spring of 2017, I was approached by Conny Kristel, EHRI’s former project director, who asked whether  I would be interested in a position as EHRI Project Manager. I was of course more than interested and after a very pleasant interview I received the good news that I could start working for EHRI in June 2017.

EHRI is a wonderful project to work for, driven by truly inspiring and motivated people. I feel very grateful that I can in my way contribute to EHRI’s goals. Working in EHRI also gives me the chance to combine my love of strategical organisation, structured spreadsheets and political (lines of) communication, with my interest in the developments in Holocaust research and related scientific fields. Apart from these work-related interests, I love everything that has to do with food: making food, buying food, eating food and cooking food. All of it. I also love to read literary fiction at any given time and you can find me in a Dutch cinema at least twice a month.