Eric Markusen (M.S.W., University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

, Ph.D., University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

) was Professor of Sociology and Social Work at Southwest Minnesota State University

Southwest Minnesota State University

Southwest Minnesota State University is a public, four-year university that is part of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System. It is located in Marshall, Minnesota, United States, a city of 13,000 people. The school has a full-time enrollment of approximately 3,500 students and...

 in Marshall, Minnesota

Marshall, Minnesota

As of the census of 2000, there were 12,735 people, 4,914 households, and 2,914 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,537.0 people per square mile . There were 5,182 housing units at an average density of 625.4 per square mile...

, USA

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and Research Director of the Danish Center for Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

 and Genocide

Genocide

Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

 Studies in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

. He also served as Associate Editor of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, published in 1999.

Markusen's research took him to former Soviet satellites

Satellite state

A satellite state is a political term that refers to a country that is formally independent, but under heavy political and economic influence or control by another country...

, Cambodia

Cambodia

Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...

, Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

, Bosnia, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

, Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

, Eritrea

Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

, Rwanda

Rwanda

Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...

 and Chad

Chad

Chad , officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west...

. His later study focused on genocidal violence in former Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

 during the 1990s, and the genocide cases before the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The 2007 conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars

International Association of Genocide Scholars

The International Association of Genocide Scholars is a global, interdisciplinary, non-partisan organization that seeks to further research and teaching about the nature, causes, and consequences of genocide, and advance policy studies on prevention of genocide. The Association, founded in 1994 by...

was dedicated to Markusen's memory.

Selected publications

• Genocide in Darfur (with S. Totten, 2006)
• Collective Violence: Harmful Behavior in Groups and Governments (with C. Summers, 1999)
• Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century (co-edited with D. Kopf, 1995)
• Computers, ethics, and collective violence (with C. Summers), Journal of Systems and Software, 1992, 17(1), 91–103.
• The Genocide Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat (with R. Lifton, 1990)