The GHS Committee

Meet the group of experienced scholars and historians that keeps the German History society running.

Please get in touch if you have any inquiries for specific members of the GHS.

Mark Hewitson

Mark Hewitson is Professor of German History and Politics at the School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS), University College London. Mark's interests lie principally in the intellectual, cultural and political history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany and Europe. He is currently working on projects about nationalism and national identity, experiences and representations of modern warfare, and conceptions of Europe and the West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mark is also interested in various aspects of historical theory, including the relationship between history and other social sciences.

Secretary

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Helen Roche

Associate Professor in Modern European Cultural History at the University of Durham. Her work has been featured in the press nationally and internationally, including appearances in The Times, The GuardianThe Daily Telegraph, on the BBC and Sky News. Her first book, Sparta’s German Children: The ideal of ancient Sparta in the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps, 1818-1920, and in National Socialist elite schools (the Napolas), 1933-1945, was published in 2013, and has subsequently received critical acclaim from reviewers in several disciplines, including Classics, intellectual history, and the history of education. Her article ‘Surviving Stunde Null was also awarded German History journal’s “Best Article of 2015” prize.

 

Treasurer

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Christopher Dillon

Christopher Dillon is a Senior Lecturer in Modern German History at King’s College London. His research focuses on the history of gender and political culture in Weimar and Nazi Germany. He is the author of Dachau and the SS: A Schooling in Violence (2015) and is currently writing a socio-cultural history of the 1918-19 Revolution in Bavaria.

GHI Representative

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Stephan Bruhn

Stephan Bruhn joined the GHIL in May 2019. He studied History and Philosophy at the University of Münster (BA) and Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau (MA). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kiel with a discourse analysis on reform groups in late Anglo-Saxon England. Before coming to London, he held positions at the Universities of Freiburg im Breisgau and Kiel. His current research project focuses on the relationship between ecclesiastical and social hierarchies in the Frankish and early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Fellowship Officer

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Edmund Wareham Wanitzek

Edmund Wareham is Social and cultural historian of late medieval and early modern German-speaking Europe at Royal Holloway, University of London. Edmund's research broadly explores the effects of religious change on the values and beliefs of ordinary women and men. He undertook undergraduate and graduate studies in History and German at the universities of Oxford, Trier and Freiburg im Breisgau, and his research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung, the German History Society, the Royal Historical Society and the Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung. Edmund has held library fellowships at the Pitts Theology Library, University of Emory, and the Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel.

Journal Editor

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Anna Ross

Anna Ross is Associate Professor of Modern European History at the University of Warwick. Her work focusses on processes of state-making, including thinking about the limits of states and their international alternatives. Anna's first book, Beyond the Barricades: Government and State-Building in Post-Revolutionary Prussia, 1848-58 (Oxford, 2019), investigates the shifting political landscape in central Europe after the 1848/9 revolutions. Her current project pushes this work forward by placing central European state-building in its international context against the backdrop of imperial collapse at the end of the First World War. Anna has held visiting positions at the University of Sydney, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Princeton.

Journal Editor

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Joachim Whaley

Joachim Whaley studied History at Christ’s College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1975 and became a Fellow of Christ’s in 1976. In 1978 he took up a Fellowship at Robinson College, before transferring to Gonville & Caius in 1987. He was appointed to a lectureship in the German Department, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages in 1980. In 2013 he was appointed Professor of German History and Thought.. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1984 and Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. In 2010 Joachim Whaley was awarded a Pilkington Teaching Prize by the University of Cambridge for his outstanding teaching in German history, thought, and politics.

Book Series Editor

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Neil Gregor

Neil Gregor is Professor of Modern European History and Director of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton. Neil researches and teaches modern German history within a broader European frame. At the core of his research interests are the origins, impact and legacies of National Socialism. His current focus is on histories of orchestral music-making and performing in twentieth century Germany, and recently completed a book manuscript on The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany. Alongside his academic work Neil contributes occasionally to a wide variety of media and online fora including contributions to The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Literary Review,  and Times Higher Education.

Book Series Editor

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Bridget Heal

Head of School of History at the University of St Andrews. Bridget's research focuses on the long-term impact of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations on German society and culture.

Outreach Officer

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Jeff Bowersox

Jeff Bowersox is an associate professor of German history at UCL, where he examines the connections that tied Germans and Europeans into the globalizing world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has explored these connections in most detail in his book, Raising Germans in the Age of Empire: Youth and Colonial Culture, 1871-1914 (Oxford UP, 2013), and has recently published articles on Black and blackface entertainers in the German lands around 1900, representations of ethnic and racial difference in Playmobil toys, and debates over "Moor pharmacies" in Germany and Austria. He is also the managing editor of Black Central Europe, which offers historical resources on 1000 years of Blackness in the German-speaking lands.

Institutional Relations Officer

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Marina Pérez de Arcos

Coming soon...

PGR Prize Officer

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Joseph Cronin

Joseph Cronin is the Director of the Leo Baeck Institute London and specialises in research into Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust. After graduating with a BA and MA from Durham University, Joseph conducted his PhD at the University of London between 2012 and 2016. Before joining the LBI, Joseph was a Lecturer in modern German History at Queen Mary University of London. His first monograph, published in 2019, is titled Russian-speaking Jews in Germany’s Jewish communities, 1990–2005.

UG Prize Officer

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Róisín Watson

Róisín joined the Open University in 2023 as Lecturer in Early Modern History. Following the completion of her PhD at the University of St Andrews in 2015, she taught at the University of Winchester and King’s College London. From 2018-2023 Róisín was a Departmental Lecturer at the University of Oxford. She has held research fellowships from the Institute of Historical Research, the Leibniz Institut für Europäische Geschichte, and the Society for Renaissance Studies.

Communications Officer

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Charlie Knight

Charlie Knight is Wolfson PhD Scholar in the Humanities at the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton. His research interests lie in German-Jewish history, histories of migration during the Holocaust, and the archive more broadly. Charlie was previously a content researcher at the Imperial War Museum and postgraduate representative for the British and Irish Association for Holocaust Studies; he is currently an Outreach Fellow at the Parkes Institute, and teaches at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies at University College London.