Professor Gilly Carr

Professor Gilly Carr joined the Fellowship of St Catharine's in 2006 and has been a Director of Studies since 2000. Before this she taught at the University of Kent following her MPhil and PhD at Cambridge (St John's College.)

Research interests

Professor Gilly Carr's research spans the fields of archaeology, heritage studies, Holocaust studies and history, where her particular interest is in the Second World War in Europe. Gilly is also a member of the UK delegation of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), where she chairs the five-year project 'Safeguarding Sites', which has written a Charter to safeguard Holocaust heritage in Europe. She is also on the academic advisory board of the UK Holocaust Memorial Centre which oversees content. Gilly has over 70 publications, including 16 edited and authored volumes. Her latest monograph, 'A Materiality of Internment' (Routledge), about the objects made in internment camps in Germany in WWII, was published in 2024. Her latest co-edited volume (with Rachel Pistol), 'British Internment and the Internment of Britons' was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2023. Her previous monograph was 'Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Channel Islands: A Legitimate Heritage?', published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019. It examines those islanders who were sent to Nazi prisons and concentration camps during the war and the long-term impact of their experiences, most especially their long-term marginalisation from heritage and public memory. Gilly's long-term heritage activism in the Channel Islands was recognised with the European Heritage Prize in 2020. 

Gilly has a particular research interest in wartime incarceration, internment and imprisonment; in 2022-23 she was involved in an excavation at Ravensbrueck Memorial with Professor Claudia Theune (University of Vienna); in 2024 she excavated the former concentration camp of Svatava in the Czech Republic. She was previously involved in fieldwork in Jersey, working with colleagues on a WWI POW camp. Earlier projects involved excavation of WWII prison camps in Norway and Jersey.

She is also active in various related heritage projects in the Channel Islands. In July 2024, she worked with the Stolpersteine Foundation, Jersey Heritage and Guernsey Museums to bring 35 Stolpersteine memory stones to the Channel Islands. 

From August 2023 to May 2024, she coordinated the Lord Pickles Alderney Expert Review to calculate how many people were sent to the island as forced labourers and how many people died. The results of this research are available on a government website. Her most recent exhibition, 'On British Soil: Victims of Nazism in the Channel Islands' was shown at the Wiener Library in London in 2018 and in Guernsey in 2019. She oversees the research website www.occupiedalderney.org, which provides accurate information on what happened in Alderney during WWII. Gilly has also written a website, which details the stories of all Channel Islanders deported to Nazi prisons and camps: www.frankfallaarchive.org.

Carr, G. (2024). A Materiality of Internment (Routledge).

Carr, G. and Pistol, R. (eds) (2023). British Internment and the Internment of Britons. (Bloomsbury Academic).

Carr, G. (2020) Nazi Prisons in the British Isles (Pen and Sword).

Carr, G. (2019). Victims of Nazism in the Channel Islands: A legitimate Heritage? (Bloomsbury Academic).

Carr, G. (2017). The Small Things of Life and Death: an exploration of value and meaning in the material culture of Nazi camps. International Journal of Historical Archaeology. DOI 10.1007/s10761-017-0435-0. (Paper issue 22.3, Sept. 2018).

Carr, G. (2017). Nazi camps on British soil: The excavation of Lager Wick forced labour camp in Jersey, Channel Islands. Journal of Conflict Archaeology. DOI 10.1080/15740773.2017.1334333 (Published in print 2016 in vol 11 (2-3): 135-157.

Carr, G. and Sturdy Colls, C. (2016). Taboo and Sensitive Heritage: Labour camps, burials and the role of activism in the Channel Islands, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 22 (9): 702-715. DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2016.1191524

Carr, G. (2016). ‘Illicit Antiquities’? The Collection of Nazi militaria in the Channel Islands. World Archaeology 48(2): 254-266. DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2016.1152196

Carr, G. and Reeves, K. (ed.) (2015). Heritage and Memory of War: Responses from small islands. Routledge: New York.

Carr, G., Willmot, L. and Sanders, P. (2014). Protest, Defiance and Resistance in the German Occupied Channel Islands, 1940-1945. (Bloomsbury Academic)

Carr, G. (2014). Legacies of Occupation: Archaeology, Heritage and Memory in the Channel Islands. (Springer). Nominated for James Deetz book prize.

Carr, G. and Mytum, H. (eds) (2012). Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity Behind Barbed Wire. New York: Routledge.

Mytum, H. and Carr, G. (eds) (2012). Prisoners of War: Archaeology, Memory and Heritage of 19th- and 20th- Century Mass Internment. New York: Springer.