Blaze Joel is an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas – Austin’s Clements Center for National Security. He graduated with a PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on nationalism, memory, violence, and identity in twentieth-century Europe. His dissertation, titled “The Last Berlin Walls in Europe: Conflict, Memory, and Social Division in the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country” examines how commemoration, education, and sports have worked to keep communities apart in the aftermath of inter-ethnic violence. By analyzing the process through which societies become divided and through which division is maintained after conflict, his dissertation broadens the definition of and re-conceptualizes divided societies by focusing on the social elements.

Prior to Berkeley, Blaze graduated with a degree in History and Anthropology from Dartmouth College and earned a MA and MSc from Columbia University and the London School of Economics as part of their Dual Degree in International and World History Program.