Rate My Professor Max Bergholz

Max Bergholz is Professor of History at Concordia University, where he has taught since 2011. He earned a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in Balkan and East European history from the University of Toronto in 2010. His research employs microhistorical approaches to the history of modern Europe, focusing on the local dynamics of nationalism, intercommunal violence, and historical memory, with fieldwork centered on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia.

Bergholz’s first book, Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community (Cornell University Press, 2016), examines the causes and effects of violence in 1941 in a multi-ethnic community along the Bosnia-Croatia border and its impact on local identities. The book received the 2017 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize from the American Historical Association, the 2019 Laura Shannon Prize from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and several other awards; it has appeared in Bosnian (2018, second edition 2024) and Chinese (2023) editions. He is currently writing Our Truths: Violence and the Challenge of a Common Humanity, which explores postwar efforts to confront memories of 1941 violence in the Croatian town of Glina. In 2026, Bergholz received the Dan David Prize for his scholarship on violence, nationalism, and memory in modern Europe. He has held fellowships from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and other organizations, and has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on related topics.