Professor Paul Betts

At the moment I am writing a socio-cultural history of 1989 with Penguin (UK) and Harvard University Press (US).

I was Visiting Fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich in 2019 and 2024; Visiting Fellow at Sciences Po, Paris, in Spring 2022 and Chaire Ganshof van der Meersch, Wiener Ansbach Fellow, University of Brussels, in February 2022.   

I serve on the Beirat of the GHI in London and the ZZF in Potsdam, and am on the Editorial Board of Past & Present and the Journal of Contemporary History, and am Editor for the ‘New Approaches to Modern German History’ Series at Berghahn Books.  

• Continental Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• Global history

I am also working on a research grant project: Global Catholicism: The Papacy of Pope Pius XII.

Currently I am writing a socio-cultural history of 1989 with Penguin (UK) and Harvard University Press (US).

In autumn 2024 I am a Visiting Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

Published books include:

• Socialism Goes Global: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation, jointly written with James Mark et al (Oxford: OUP), January 2022
• Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe after World War II (New York: Basic Books/ London: Profile Books, 2020), which was awarded the Jacques Barzun Prize for Cultural History by the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 2021
• Within Walls:  Private Life in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010; paperback, 2012), which was awarded the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History by the Wiener Library
• The Authority of Everyday Objects:  A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004; paperback, 2007). 

I have also co-edited seven volumes:

• Rethinking Socialist Space in the 20th Century (London, 2024), with Marcus Colla
• The Ethics of Seeing: Photography and 20th Century German History (Berghahn, 2017), with Jennifer Evans and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann
• Religion, Science and Communism in Cold War Europe (Palgrave, 2016), with Stephen A. Smith
• Heritage in the Modern World:  Historical Preservation in International Perspective, Past & Present Supplement 10 (OUP, 2015), with Corey Ross
• Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination:  Saul Friedländer and the Future of Holocaust Studies (Continuum, 2010), with Christian Wiese
• Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany (Berghahn Books, 2008; pb, 2011), with Alon Confino and Dirk Schumann
• Socialist Modern:  East German Everyday Culture and Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2008), with Katherine Pence
• Pain and Prosperity:  Reconsidering Twentieth Century German History (Stanford University Press, 2003), with Greg Eghigian
   

Co-Curator, traveling exhibition and catalogue, Tito in Africa:  Picturing Solidarity, Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade (June-September 2017), Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (November 2017-March 2018), Die Wende Museum, Los Angeles (Spring 2019).

I was Chair of the German History Society (2011-2014), and co-edited the journal German History, 2004-2009.  Since 2009 I have served on the Editorial Board of Past & Present.

I am Series Editor of New Directions in German History, Berghahn Books, 2012-, and was Series Co-Editor, St Antony’s Series, Palgrave Macmillan 2013-2016.  

I was Director of St Antony’s European Studies Centre, 2015-2017.