Verena Meier is a historian of modern Germany and Europe, whose research focuses on the genocide of Sinti and Roma during Nazism, investigating the long history of antigypsyism in 19th and 20th Century Germany as well as its postwar legacy in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and German Democratic Republic. Her work  explores how institutions of power – ranging from the police and the church to transnational networks of intellectuals – translate visions of social order into practice, and how these processes shape inclusion, exclusion, and the boundaries of belonging in modern societies. She is currently a DFG-funded Postdoctoral Researcher at the Research Center on Antigypsyism at the University of Heidelberg and a Fellow at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University in Berlin. 

In her work, Meier’s priority is to seek out the voices of the marginalized and their agency when facing oppression. To achieve this, she explores multiple disciplines and methodologies, including police history, perpetrator studies, history of science and the study of racism as well as gender studies and oral history.  

In 2017, Meier was commissioned by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma to author a report on “Protestantism and Antigypsyism.” The report provided a foundation for academic and civic discussions on churches’ historical responsibilities and their role in the discrimination and persecution of Sinti and Roma from the period of Martin Luther’s reformation until present day. 

Between 2018 and 2024, she was a doctoral researcher at the Research Center on Antigypsyism at the University of Heidelberg. Her dissertation, Criminal Police and Genocide – The Nazi Persecution of Sinti and Roma in Magdeburg and Transitional Justice after 1945 under the Allies and in the GDR, received the highest distinction (summa cum laude) and was awarded the Lamers Peace Foundation prize for outstanding scholarship on peace, freedom and security. 

While working on her PhD, Meier received several scholarships, such as the Gerald D. Feldman Travel Funds from the Max Weber Foundation and a scholarship from the Women in the Holocaust International Study Center at Givat Haviva.   

In her current postdoctoral project, Meier investigates the entanglements of antigypsyism, antisemitism, and colonial racism (1830–1950). Using a history of science perspective, the project examines how 19th and early 20th century criminology and medicine constructed ethnically and biologically coded markers of deviance and traces how these discourses circulated through scientific and popular media. Within the DFG-funded research group, she expands her scholarly work by integrating digital humanities methods into her research practice.