Professor Donald Bloxham awarded the 2007 Lemkin Prize for work on the Armenian Genocide

The Institute for the Study of Genocide (New York)is pleased to announce presentation of the fourth biennial Lemkin award to Donald Bloxham for his book, THE GREAT GAME OF GENOCIDE: IMPERIALISM, NATIONALISM, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE OTTOMAN ARMENIANS (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Bloxham says, "The project from which the book evolved originally intended to focus upon Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide, and Western acceptance of that denial. But it soon became clear that denial and its accommodation could not be properly understood without knowledge of how the great powers related to the deeds of the Ottoman empire before, during and immediately after the First World War itself." "For nearly a century this genocide has either been ignored or not recognized for what it was. In this book Donald Bloxham provides an explanation for why it happened and why it has subsequently been overlooked, and offers a new interpretation which places the genocide firmly in the context of international history." (OUP).

Donald Bloxham is Professor of Modern History at Edinburgh University, author of Genocide on Trial (Oxford University Press, 2001) and co-author of The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches (Manchester University Press, 2005. He is a Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for 2007-2008.

The Lemkin ceremony will be held at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Room 1311 North Hall, 445 West 59 Street, New York from 2PM to 5PM on Friday, November 9, 2007. The formal presentation and talks will be preceded by a reception with refreshments from 2PM to 2:30PM. There will be books available for purchase and signing by the author after the formal ceremony.

The Lemkin award honors Raphael Lemkin, the originator of the concept of genocide and first exponent of a United Nations Genocide Convention. The biennial award recognizes the best book (for non-fiction works published in English) published in the preceding two years which focuses on explanation of genocide, crimes against humanity, state mass killings and gross violations of human rights and strategies to prevent such crimes and violations. Previous recipients of the award include Peter Balakian (2005), Samantha Power (2003) and Alison Des Forges (2000).