News
Sabine Küntzel, whose PhD thesis I co-supervised, has just published her first book on colonialism and World War II. More specifically, the book deals with how Rommel`s soldiers on the North African battle field fought in a colonised space and perceived the indigenous populations through the essentializing lens of Orientalism and backwardness. Please check out her book Kolonialismus im Krieg: Die Kriegserfahrung deutscher Wehrmachtsoldaten im Nordafrikafeldzug, 1941-1943
An article of mine on tuberculosis and the Nazi legacy in West Germany has just been published with the Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte. Please check it out on Vierteljahrshefte 4 2023.
Academic interests
I have a strong passion for 20th century transnational history in Europe. The perspectives and methods of entangled history have very much informed my teaching and research since I started my academic career in Germany, and it is this approach that frames and links my various research interests, ranging from European fascism to colonialism, from World War II and genocide to consumerism and Cold War cultures.
My interest in the movement of peoples, ideas, technologies, and institutions across national boundaries has been considerably augmented by my own experiences abroad: I have had the great pleasure of working in different places in Europe and North America, and at places where there is a particular academic focus on the cultural crossovers between European societies, including the German Historical Institute in Rome, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trent, Italy.
My future work will focus on two topics: a cultural history of violence in North Africa during the 20th century, tentatively titled ‘In the Shadow of El Alamein: War Violence during the North African Campaign’, and a short history of Italian food and its worldwide spread, ‘A Tale of Modernity: The Global Success of Italian Cuisine in Western Societies’.
Background
Born and raised in Southern Germany, I studied history and philosophy in Munich where I earned my PhD degree in 2005 with a study on the Sixties, the Cold War, and pacifism in West Germany.
I subsequently moved to Italy where I lived first in Trento and then in Rome. During my time in Italy, I worked on two topics that like few others have linked Germany and Italy: food and fascism.
While the pizza became a common staple in Germany in the 1960s, the Axis alliance between the two countries was, despite all the resentments that Germans and Italians nourished against each other, a strong bond between the main two fascist regimes that included cooperative activities as much as learning and cross-cultural fertilization. In particular, I explored the various ways of social engineering in which Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy tried to create new racist societies both at home and in their newly conquered territories.
After briefly returning to Germany where I lived in Berlin and Freiburg, I moved to Ireland to teach modern European history both at Trinity College and University College Dublin. Before coming to UIO, I worked at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam on a project that dealt with tuberculosis as a major health threat of the 20th Century.
Positions held
2017-2020: Associate Professor in Modern European History, University of Oslo
2015-2017: Assistant Professor in Modern History, ZZF Potsdam
2013-2014: Lecturer in International History, University College Dublin
2012-2013: Assistant Professor in European History, Trinity College Dublin
2011-2012: Lecturer in European History, University of Freiburg
2010-2011: Research Fellow, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS)
2010: Lecturer in European History, Free University Berlin
2005-2009: Research Fellow, German Historical Institute, Rome
2004: Research Fellow, University of Nuremberg
2003-2004: Research Fellow, Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico, Trento
1999-2003: Research Fellow, Institute of Contemporary History, Munich
Fellowships and Grants
2022-2023: Senior Fellow at the Simon-Wiesenthal-Institute for Holocaust Studies in Vienna.
2014: Cummings Foundation Fellow at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
2011: Chercheur invité at the Centre canadien d'études allemandes et européennes de l'Université de Montréal and at the Centre d'Excellence sur l'Union européenne, McGill University
2010: Fellow of the Max Weber Foundation
2009: Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam
Teaching and Supervision
I am happy to supervise students who want to write on Nazi Germany, World War II, racism, consumerism, the Cold War and colonialism from comparative, transnational and global angles. Supervision takes place in small groups and in a supportive and stimulating atmosphere.
Many of my students have successfully completed their studies, with some of them excelling. In 2021, for instance, Ann-Kristin Korneliussen was nominated for UiO`s Center for Interdisciplinary Gender Research award for the best Master's thesis, while Mathias Hatleskog Tjønn received the Hifo-Fritt Ord Scholarship for his MPhil thesis and the Babylon prize for best article in 2019, which was based on a chapter of his thesis.
I teach widely across 20th Century European history in its imperial, transnational, and global frameworks. Among the modules I teach are:
HIS2320 – Coming to Terms with a Nightmare: World War II, Axis Occupation, and Historians after 1945
HIS2423: Reel Reality: Movies in 20th Century History
HIS4225: Racism: The History of a Powerful Idea
HIS4230: Introduction to International History
MITRA4300: Global Encounters 1850-2010. Transnational Movements of People, Ideas and Commodities
MITRA4000 – Key Issues in Modern International and Transnational History
MITRA4040 – Research and Writing Training in History
Squaring the Triangle: Advanced course in Research Ethics for PhD Candidates
Current Research
I am currently working on the following research projects:
In the Shadow of El Alamein: The Desert War, Fascist Biopolitics and Violence in North Africa in the 20th Century
A Tale of Modernity: The Global Success of Italian Cuisine in Western Societies
Tuberculosis in Nazi Germany
Public Outreach and Service
I have served as advisor to policy makers on various historical issues, often related to the thorny question of how to righten cases of historical injustice. Most recently, I provided the German government with an expert opinion on the persecution of Jewish people in Algeria during World War II following the negotiations between Germany and the Jewish Claims Conference over Holocaust reparations in 2018.
In addition, I have collaborated with media representatives in Germany, Italy, Ireland, Austria and the US. Follow the link for my interview with Iliana Magra from the New York Times on Norway`s late apology to women who were accused of having had sexual relationships with German soldiers during the country`s occupation between 1940 and 1945.
In academia, I have reviewed books and peer-reviewed manuscripts for American Historical Review, Journal of Contemporary History, Social History, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, German History, Central European History, Modern Italy, European History Quarterly, German Studies Review, Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, Ricerche di Storia Politica, Dublin Review of Books, Food & History, Cold War History, HSK, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus, Politics, Religion and Ideology, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, sehepunkte, and Routledge as well as research applications for funding bodies such as DAAD and HERA.