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Staff Profiles

Professor Daniel Siemens

Professor of European History

  • Telephone: +44 191 208 6493
  • Address: Room 1.22a
    School of History, Classics and Archaeology
    Armstrong Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

I am a historian of modern (Central) Europe and its global entanglements, with a particular interest in the history of mass media and journalism, the interwar years, Nazism and its aftermath, the cultural history of politics, legal history, historiography, criminal history, German-Jewish history and the history of the GDR.

After having studied history, literature and law in Potsdam, Montpellier and Berlin, I received my doctorate in modern history from Humboldt University Berlin 2006, where I have also started to teach as a teaching assistant. I was appointed lecturer in Modern History at Bielefeld University in the fall of 2006. From 2011-14 I served as the DAAD Francis L. Carsten Lecturer in Modern German History at University College London, School of Slavonic and East European History (UCL-SSEES). Subsequently, I returned to Bielefeld University, where I submitted my habilitation thesis in 2016. I received the venia legendi in early 2017 and was promoted to the position of senior lecturer. In October 2017 I joined Newcastle University as professor of European history.

So far, I have published four research monographs, 22 peer-reviewed research articles in leading scientific journals and 28 book chapters on various aspects of modern European history, covering the period from the 19th to the 21st century. My academic work has won several prizes and is translated into four languages, among them Polish and Mandarin. I have also edited or co-edited eight collective volumes and special issues, and I am – together with Jennifer V. Evans and Matt Fitzpatrick – a series editor of the Modern German History Series with Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, London. Since 2020, I furthermore serve as an editor of the journal Central European History (CEH).

Roles and Responsibilities at Newcastle University

Head of History (2022-2023)

Member of Council (2020-2023)

NCL Steering Group Europe (2021-)

Founder and Co-Convenor of the Modern European History Seminar (2018-)

External Responsibilities

AHRC Peer Review College (since 2020)

Member of the Review Panel of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) Member of the Review Panel of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)

External examiner for PhD students and Habilitation candidates at the University of Edinburgh, Flinder University (Australia) and LMU Munich (Germany)

Peer-Reviewer for Horizon 2020 - MSCA-IF

Previous Roles and Resonsibilities (until 2022)

Postgraduate research selector for history (PGR selector, 2018-2020 and 2021-2022)

Member of Senate at Newcastle University (2018-2021)

External examiner for history (UG) at Durham University, 2018-2021

NUCoRe Heritage, Steering Group (2019-2022)

Co-Convenor of the North East Transnational and World History Seminar (NETWORC)

Honours and Awards

Research Fellowship of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS) at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (2023-2024)

Nomination for the Teaching Excellence Award from the Newcastle University Student Union, Category ‘Outstanding Contribution to Personal Support’ (2021)

Honorary Fellow at Historisches Kolleg, Munich (2020)

Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, Munich (2020)

Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF), Potsdam (summer 2019)

Military History Monthly Book of the Year Award 2019 (shortlisted)

Stavenhagen Guest-Professorship at the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History, Hebrew University Jerusalem (2018)

DAAD Visiting professorship at the University of Bologna (2016)

Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies, LMU Munich (2015)

BBC History Magazine "Book of the Year" for The Making of a Nazi Hero (2013)

Prize 'Geisteswissenschaften International' for Horst Wessel: Tod und Verklaerung eines Nationalsozialisten (2010)

Member of the Junges Kolleg, a research network for excellent young researchers and scholars based at the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, Duesseldorf (2009-2012)

Franz Steiner Prize for Transatlantic History (2006)

Erhard-Hoepfner-Prize by the Berliner Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (2003)

Research Grants

from Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Stiftung Mercator, German Historical Institute Washington DC, UCL, Bielefeld University, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and others

Languages

German, English, French (active)

Spanish, Latin (passive)


Research

Current research projects

As fellows at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS) in Jerusalem, Dr Iris Nachum (Jerusalem), Prof. Gideon Reuveni (University of Sussex, UK) and I are leading the international research group ‘Paying for the Past: Reparations after the Holocaust in Global Context’ in the academic year 2023-24. Taking the German-Israeli-Jewish negotiations about reparations and restitution in the 1950s as a starting point, we enquire about the historical experiences and current problems of harm-repair mechanisms more broadly, incorporating post-colonial, legal and artistic approaches and perspectives. My own research project 'Law and politics after the Holocaust: A global history of the United Restitution Organization (URO)', which I continue to pursue as part of this research group, is an organisational, political, legal and intellectual history of the United Restitution Organisation (URO). The URO was a Jewish legal aid organization, founded in London in 1948. It grew into a major player in the field of restitution and compensation and helped Jewish and other victims of Nazi persecution to fight for their rights in the West German courts. It also influenced the politics of restitution as well as the early historiography of the Holocaust.

My most recent book deals with the Weltbühne journal, one of the leading periodicals of Germany’s political left in the 20th century, and its long-time editor Hermann Budzislawski. He went into exile in 1933 and emigrated to the United States in 1940. After the war, he returned to occupied Germany and from 1948 acted as the doyen of East German journalism in the GDR, as professor, editor, and politician. This book, published in 2022 with Aufbau, Berlin, is an exemplary case study of key currents in German and transatlantic intellectual history, transcending established political and geographical boundaries. An American edition is currently under preparation for the George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas with Wisconsin University Press.

Postgraduate and postdoctoral supervision

I welcome proposals from postgraduate students who are interested in topics related to my research and beyond, in particular in the history of modern Europe, media history, the history of crime, historiography and transnational history. Potential applicants for British Academy, Leverhulme, or Marie Curie funding schemes are welcome to approach me to discuss their research plans. I am also very much interested to hear from fellow academics to pursue joint-research projects. Please do not hesitate to get in touch!

Current PhD studens (as lead supervisory or member of supervisory team):

Chris Law: Defending the Nation or Violating Human Rights? The Autobiographical Memory of Former Border Soldirs of the GDR after 1990 (funded by the AHRC's Northern Bridge Consortium, in cooperation with the Berlin Wall Foundation)

Rob Granger: Manufacturing Consent: Life Under the Later Franco Regime, 1964-1975 (funded by AHRC's Northern Bridge Consortium)

Yichi Chen: The History of Changsha During the Sino-Japanese War

Michael Walker: The Educational Highway: The Education in the Workers' Educational Association, 1909-1949

Omar Hamid, The UK and the United Nations Agencies (1979-1997)

Christian Schemmert: Bis an die Grenzen der Beobachtbarkeit. Ulbrichts Presseforscher, die Entstehung der „sozialistischen Journalistik“ und das Rote Kloster von den Anfängen bis in die 1970er Jahre

Former PhD students:

Kerstin Schulte (completed 2021): "Volksgemeinschaft" Behind Barbed Wire: The Internment Camps in the British and American Zones of Occupation and their significance for German postwar society, 1945-1970 (supported by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung).

Stephen Freath (career change in 2020): Infanticide in the Coroner's Courts in north east England, 1850-1900

Some background information

So far, I have published four research monographs, edited several collective volumes and special issues, and have authored articles in internationally leading journals, including The Journal of Modern European History, The Journal of Genocide Research, The Journal of European Studies, Central Europe, Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History and Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte.

My PhD dissertation studied the relationship between mass media, the judiciary and politics in Germany, France and the United States in the early twentieth century through a comparative historical approach. My second book is a biographical study of the early Nazi activist Horst Wessel, whom, after his violent death in 1930, was elevated into an icon of German youth by the Nazi regime. This book, originally published in German, was also translated into English. Very recently, my third book came out with Yale University press. Entitled Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts, it is the first comprehensive history of the Nazi stormtroopers (SA) that analyses the fate of this paramilitary organization until the end of the Second World War. Against the established historiographical consensus, I argue that the SA did not sink into oblivion after the 'Night of the Long Knives' in 1934, but gained new clout in the second half of the 1930s and even contributed to the extremely violent German warfare and to the Holocaust. Richard J. Evans, reviewing the book for the London Review of Books, called it 'a comprehensive and carefully considered account, which will now be the standard work on the subject. […] Indispensable.' And Taylor Downing wrote in Military History Monthly: '[An] excellent new history of the Sturmableilungen. . . a convincing thesis, supported with immense scholarship and research in national, regional, and local archives, providing a rich and detailed history.'

Memberships

At Newcastle University, I am founder and co-convenor of the Modern European History Seminar. I am also a member of the NUCoRe Heritage, of the Eastern European and Russia Research Group, the Forum of Human Rights and Social Justice and of the Military, War and Security Research Group. In addition, I am also a member of: Royal Historical Society (fellow), German History Society, German Association for British Studies, Forum Justizgeschichte, Microcosms of the Holocaust, Arbeitskreis Gewalt - Geschichte - Gesellschaft and Junges Kolleg at the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of the Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (alumnus).

Teaching

Office hours in 2023/24, term 1

Monday, 11am-12pm and Tuesday 12-2pm. Please drop me an email to arrange for a meeting via zoom. Face-to-face meetings will resume from 28 October in ARMB 1.22a.

Undergraduate Teaching

Germany and Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries (HIS 2307)

Genocide and Justice in the Twentieth Century: From the Armenian Genocide to the International Criminal Court (HIS 3235)

The Aftermath of War in Europe and Asia, 1945-1956 (HIS 2317)

History and Film: Representing the Past (HIS 2308)

The Writing of History (HIS 3020)

History Lab I (1102)

History Lab II (HIS 1103)

Postgraduate Teaching

Conflict in European History (HIS 8052 and HIS 8053, team-taught)

Practice in History (HIS 8061, team-taught)

MA dissertation module (QV31)

Previous modules taught at Newcastle University:

Introduction to European History (HIS 1027)

Varieties in European History (HIS 1029)

The History of Modern Germany, 1806 until today (HIS 2241)

Reading History (HIS 3000)

Publications