Professor Pendas' research focuses on war crimes trials after World War II, particularly on West German Holocaust trials. He is currently working on two projects: a history of Nazi trials in German courts in all occupation zones from 1945 to 1950, to be published by Cambridge University Press; and a synthetic history of law and mass violence in the modern period. Dr. Pendas has authored “Toward a New Politics? On the Recent Historiography of Human Rights” (Contemporary European History); “Retroactive Law and Proactive Justice: Debating Crimes against Humanity in Germany, 1945-1950” (Central European History); “Interrogating Torture: Human Rights, the War on Terror, and the Fate of America” (Journal of American Studies); “Punishment as Prevention? The Politics of Punishing Génocidaires” (Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies); “Explaining Nazism: Ethics, Beliefs and Interests” (Modern Intellectual History). He is also the series editor for a book series with Bloomsbury Press, Genocide in Comparative Perspective.