
You have reached the personal web site of Joachim Savelsberg, a professor in the Department of Sociology and an affiliate with the Law School of the University of Minnesota. I am also a holder of the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair, dedicated to issues of human rights and genocide.
My most recent book, Knowing about Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles, was published in 2021 with the University of California Press. For a 5-minute summery video see here, for a podcast here.
Other work includes Representing Mass Violence, where I contrast legal and human rights representations of mass violence in Darfur with those generated in the fields of humanitarianism and diplomacy and their selective transmission by media in eight countries. American Memories: Atrocities and the Law examines how legal interventions color collective memories of mass violence. Earlier work concerns comparative imprisonment rates, the sociology of criminology, sentencing guidelines and Weberian sociology of law, and the criminalization of white-collar offenses.
I earned my degrees in my native Germany (Cologne and Trier). After research positions at Bremen and Hanover (KFN) and post-doctoral fellowships at Johns Hopkins (1982) and Harvard (1986, John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow), I joined the Minnesota faculty in 1989. Subsequent visiting professorships and fellowships brought me to Bellagio (Rockefeller Foundation), Berlin (Humboldt University), Bonn (Kaete Hamburger Institute), Graz (Karl Franzens University), Munich (Ludwig Maximilian University), Paris (Institut d'études avancées), and Stellenbosch (STIAS).
I am married to Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, a cultural anthropologist and Africanist on the faculty of Carleton College. We have two adult daughters, Anna and Rebecca. Here is a biographical interview, conducted by Ryan D. King.
My most recent book, Knowing about Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles, was published in 2021 with the University of California Press. For a 5-minute summery video see here, for a podcast here.
Other work includes Representing Mass Violence, where I contrast legal and human rights representations of mass violence in Darfur with those generated in the fields of humanitarianism and diplomacy and their selective transmission by media in eight countries. American Memories: Atrocities and the Law examines how legal interventions color collective memories of mass violence. Earlier work concerns comparative imprisonment rates, the sociology of criminology, sentencing guidelines and Weberian sociology of law, and the criminalization of white-collar offenses.
I earned my degrees in my native Germany (Cologne and Trier). After research positions at Bremen and Hanover (KFN) and post-doctoral fellowships at Johns Hopkins (1982) and Harvard (1986, John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow), I joined the Minnesota faculty in 1989. Subsequent visiting professorships and fellowships brought me to Bellagio (Rockefeller Foundation), Berlin (Humboldt University), Bonn (Kaete Hamburger Institute), Graz (Karl Franzens University), Munich (Ludwig Maximilian University), Paris (Institut d'études avancées), and Stellenbosch (STIAS).
I am married to Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, a cultural anthropologist and Africanist on the faculty of Carleton College. We have two adult daughters, Anna and Rebecca. Here is a biographical interview, conducted by Ryan D. King.