Patricia Kennedy Grimsted (born 1935 in Elkins, West Virginia) is a historian focused on the dispossession and restitution of cultural materials during and after World War II. She is a leading authority on archives in the former Soviet Union and its successor states.[1][2][3]
Grimsted is an associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies[4] and a senior research associate at the Ukrainian Research Institute,[5] both at Harvard University, and an honorary Fellow of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.[1] Her books have been called "the best guide" to archives of the former Soviet Union.[6]
Her current project is Updated and Expanded guide to archives of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg and fate of its loot, online updated edition, sponsored by the Conference for Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), ERR Project, and International Institute for Social History (Amsterdam).[4][7]
Grimsted has taught at several universities, including American University and the University of Maryland near Washington. She is the West's leading authority on archives of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the other ex-Soviet states. Among many fellowships and awards, she was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2000-2001), and in 2002 she received the Distinguished Contribution to Slavic Studies Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.[8]