Frances Tanzer is the Rose Professor for Holocaust Studies and Jewish Culture and Associate Professor of History at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She received her PhD (2018) from Brown University. Her work has been supported by the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Center for Jewish History, the Remarque Institute at NYU, and others. 

Her scholarly work straddles Central and Eastern Europe, while also examining the region’s global interconnections—particularly those connections established through migration and forced displacement. Her research examines the aftermath of the Holocaust, histories of displacement, and the history of antisemitism and philosemitism. A sustained interest in visual culture and performance unites her explorations of these themes. Tanzer's first book, Vanishing Vienna: Philosemitism, Modernism, and Jews in a Postwar City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) examines the fraught process of cultural reconstruction in Vienna from 1938 through the early 1960s. 

Her second book project, Klezmer Dynasty: An Intimate History, 1880-2019, focuses on her own family, the Brandwein klezmer musicians of Habsburg Galicia. They innovated klezmer music and Jewish culture from 1880 to 2019 as they experienced the changes wrought by modernity, migration, the Holocaust, and its aftermath. This project connects the large-scale transformations that defined modern Jewish history to personal stories of reinvention.

During her residency at the Center for Urban History, she will pursue work on "Klezmer Dynasty," focusing in particular on research related to the Lviv Conservatory and, more generally, the Holocaust in Lviv and its environs.