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About

When the Nazis conquered the continent in 1939/1940, political elites from all over Europe and beyond fled to Great Britain, last remaining safe haven of the Allies in reachable distance. While Berlin became the capital of fascist Europe, London became the capital of free Europe, the seat of almost all European governments, and home to many European and non-European academics and activists.

The blog “Capital of Europe” reflects on the work in progress of the research project “The London Moment” (funded by the Volkswagen Foundation) and refer to related interesting links, events and literature. It aims to engage with other historians and academics of neighbouring disciplines to discuss questions relevant to the project, such as exile and state power, urban history, diplomatic relations and international law.

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Research Group

 

Dr. Julia Eichenberg (Principal Investigator)

I am a Freigeist Fellow based at the Universities of Bayreuth/Bamberg and the principal investigator of the research project “The London Moment”. For the first phase of the project, it has been based at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (since 2014), before moving the second phase to Bayreuth/Bamberg in January 2021.

I have been awarded a PhD in Modern History by the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen in 2008. Since then, I have held fellowships at Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin, and have lectured in Modern European History in TCD and UCD Dublin, Tübingen and the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Berlin.
I have published on paramilitary violence, pacifism, veterans’ welfare, and international collaboration. My first book on Polish veterans of the First World War, their struggle for social benefits and national recognition, was published in 2011. While working in an international research project on paramilitary violence after the First World War in Dublin, led by John Horne and Robert Gerwarth, I edited a CEH Special Issue entitled “Aftershocks. Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War”  as well as a volume on Veterans’ Internationalism (both with John Paul Newman).
My current research project explores the transnational collaboration of governments-in-exile in London during the Second World War and its impact on European political communication in the 20th Century. First publications include on the arrival of exiles in London and as a special issue on contemporary legal history, co-edited with Benjamin Lahusen (Berlin), Marcus Payk (Hamburg) and Kim Priemel (Oslo), as a result of our interdisciplinary research seminar on legal history.

Contact: julia.eichenberg_at_uni-bayreuth.de

Sara Weydner, M.A. (PhD Project: 2017- )

I am a post-graduate research fellow at the Department of History of Humboldt-University and member of the research project “The London Moment”. I studied history and political science in Freiburg and Montreal as well as North American Studies at Freie University in Berlin, and received a master’s degree in 2015. My master thesis dealt with transnational networks in international family planning and population control after World War II. It was awarded with the Prize of the Department of History and Cultural Studies for Gender Studies and published as an article in Geschichte und Gesellschaft in 2018.

In my Ph.D. project, I follow up on my fascination with internationalism in the twentieth century and focus on the transnational collaboration of émigré jurists in the “London Moment”. I am asking how and why émigré jurists engaged in internationalising criminal law in the 1940s. Different sites of transnational cooperation will serve as case studies to dissect the specific local intellectual and social conditions that shaped the émigré jurists’ work in international criminal law and international criminal law reform. This “social history of ideas” draws from a range of methodological approaches from legal sociology, transnational history, and the history of knowledge. The biographies of individual jurists are employed as a heuristic tool to uncover competing interpretations of international criminal and humanitarian law as well as ways of negotiating a common position among émigré jurists.

Contact: sara.weydner_at_hu-berlin.de

Simeon Marty, M.A. (PhD Project: 2018-)

I am a PhD student at the Department of History of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and member of the research project “The London Moment”. After completing my B.A. in History (major) and Science of Religion (minor) at the Universities Fribourg and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2016, I recently graduated from King’s College London with a master’s degree in World History and Cultures. My M.A. thesis “The mouse that roared: The Anguillan secessionist movement and British policy making in the decolonisation of the Anglophone Caribbean, 1966-1971” explores the interconnection between cultural stereotypes in post-war British administration and policy making in the process of decolonisation.

In my PhD Project, I will explore the transnational networks that have been established between non-Europeans, especially anti-colonial movements, and governments in exile in London during the Second World War. This research hopes to uncover to what extent the “London Moment” with its extraordinarily high concentration of political groupings and international political actors offered new perspectives for anti-colonial activists and intellectuals in the formulation of social and political alternatives. In a broader sense, it will examine how this has contributed to the manifold processes of decolonisation that followed shortly afterwards.

Contact: simeon.marty_at_hu-berlin.de

 

Francisco Vallejo, B.A. (research assistant 2021- )

I am a Global History M.A. student at the University of Bayreuth and affiliated with the research project “The London Moment”. I earned a B.A. with honours in History at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2020 with the dissertation “Between vanilla and petroleum: the case of the oil-hacienda Palma Sola, 1880-1936”. In it, I dealt with the interrelations of agrarian structures and dynamics with the extractive industry in northern Veracruz, Mexico.

My participation in this project will focus on the exile of Juan Negrín and the Second Republic in London during World War II, as well as their connections with Mexico as a central destination for Spanish exile due to the Civil War.

Contact: francisco.lopez-vallejo_at_uni-bayreuth.de

 

Former Members

Dino Tsakmaklis, B.A. (research assistant)

Marten Steinbömer, B.A. (research assistant)

Johana Kudrnová, M.A. (affiliated PhD student)