City, Modern History

Welcome to City, Modern History

Staff in City, Modern History

Dr Lise Butler is a Lecturer in Modern History. Her work is mainly focused on twentieth century British political and intellectual history, with a particular focus on the history of the British left and the history of the social sciences. She is currently completing a monograph on the policy maker, sociologist and social innovator Michael Young and the relationship between the social sciences and left-wing politics in post-war Britain. Her current research examines responses to automation and ideas about the future of work in Britain in the 1960s and 70s. Before coming to City Lise completed her doctorate at University College, Oxford, and taught at Pembroke College, Oxford. Lise is a commissioning editor for Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, former Vice Chair and founding member of the Oxford Fabian Society, and is currently leading programme development for a new City joint BA in History and Politics.

Dr Grace Carrington is a Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of the Americas and the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. She is a historian of twentieth century politics and decolonization in the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean. Grace is currently writing a book about socio-political developments in non-independent Caribbean states, within the context of the wider global history of decolonization. She is also part of an interdisciplinary research team working on the AHRC-funded Visible Crown project. Grace holds a PhD in International History from the LSE.’ 

Recent publications: 
‘1968 in the Virgin Islands: Martin Luther King and the Positive Action Movement’ in 1968 and the Americas, UCL Press (Forthcoming – Autumn 2022) 
‘The May 1967 massacre in Guadeloupe: Trauma, nationalism and decolonization’, Journal of Romance Studies (Forthcoming – September 2022)

Dr Thomas Davies is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. He has played a significant role in the development of transnational historical research, and is especially known for his work on the history of international non-governmental organizations. He is the author of NGOs: A New History of Transnational Civil Society (OUP, 2014), History of Transnational Voluntary Associations: A Critical Multidisciplinary Review (Brill, 2016), and The Possibilities of Transnational Activism: The Campaign for Disarmament between the Two World Wars (Martinus Nijhoff, 2007). He has also published extensively on the history of internationalist thought, peace movements, and disarmament. He is currently working on a manuscript on social movements and world order. He was educated at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, where he wrote a doctoral thesis on transnational activism that was awarded the British International History Group Thesis Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Dr Justin Davis Smith is associate professor at Bayes Business School where he is course director of the Charity Masters' Programme. His previous roles include speech writer to James Callaghan MP and chief executive of Volunteering England. An historian by training and inclination his research interests include the British Labour movement, and volunteering, charity and philanthropy in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain. His books include The Attlee and Churchill Administrations and Industrial Unrest, 1945-55; An Introduction to the Voluntary Sector; and Idealists and Realists: 100 years of NCVO and voluntary action. He is co-founder and former chair of the Voluntary Action History Society, set up to promote the often-neglected study of charity and philanthropy, and trustee of several voluntary organisations including the Royal Voluntary Service.

Dr Dina Fainberg is the Director of History BA Programme and Lecturer in Modern History at the Department of International Politics. Dina is an historian of the Soviet Union and modern Russia with a particular interest in the Cold War, late socialism, mass media, propaganda, and Russia's relationship with the West. Dina published articles in Cold War History and Journalism History and together with Artemy M. Kalinovsky is the co-editor of Reconsidering Stagnation: Ideology and Exchange in the Brezhnev Era (Lexington Books, 2016). Dina’s book, Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the ideological Frontlines, 1945-1991 is forthcoming with Johns Hopkins University Press. She is also preparing for publication the American diaries of Stanislav Kondrashov, one of Soviet Union’s most prolific international commentators. Dina was educated at Rutgers University and holds a PhD in Modern Russian and Modern U.S. History.

Thomas Furse is a visiting lecturer at City, University of London. He researches the history of American strategic thought and social sciences in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Primarily, his work focuses on a collection of army officers who interpreted ideas from management theory, organizational science, and futurology to design the AirLand Battle Doctrine. He was a primary editor of the JHIBlog from 2020-2023.

Dr Georgios Giannakopoulos lectures in Modern History at City, University of London. He is historian of 19th and 20th century Europe. His interests include the history of international and imperial thought, the global history of South Eastern Europe, the entwined histories of photography, propaganda, and humanitarianism. He has published widely in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, History of European Ideas, Modern Intellectual History, Contemporary European History. He is currently working on two books: A history of British intellectual engagement with South Eastern Europe (1870-1930) and a history of interventions in modern Greece. He is co-hosting the podcast International History Now and leading the Global 1922 project with partners from Europe and the UK.

Dr Peter Grant is Senior Lecturer in Management at Bayes Business School, City University of London. His historical research and publications have concentrated especially on the cultural and social history of the First World War. His books include Philanthropy and Voluntary Action in the First World War (Routledge, 2014) and National Myth and the First World War in Modern Popular Music (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Peter is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a trustee of the Amy Winehouse Foundation and former Chair of the Voluntary Action History Society.

Dr Giuseppe Griecois Lecturer in Modern History. Giuseppe is a global historian of political ideas and empires.

His research focuses on international law, imperial rule, and intellectual connections spanning Southern Europe and the Mediterranean in the 19th century.

Dr Diya Gupta is a Lecturer in Public History.  Dr Diya Gupta is a literary and cultural historian interested in how visual culture, life-writing and literature respond to war. Her current research project examines the nature of wartime violence as it turns inwards, targeting colonised civilian bodies. Entitled ‘Landscapes of hunger: violence and empathy in the 1943 Bengal Famine’, it investigates literary and visual representations of food deprivation in colonised India during the Second World War. It also assesses whether evocations of past hunger can become new ways of understanding food inequalities in the world today. Her first book, India in the Second World War: An Emotional History, was published in 2023 by Hurst and Oxford University Press.

Dr Claudia Jefferies (née de Lozanne) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at City, University of London. Her main fields of research are monetary and financial history. She received her doctoral degree from the WWZ, University Basel, Switzerland in 1997, and has since then published monographies and articles on fiscal and monetary theory and policy in early modern societies, with a special focus on Spain and the Americas. More recently, she has studied the relationship between mining and markets in early modern Spanish America and has co-edited a collective volume: Mining, Money and Markets in the Early Modern Atlantic. In the last ten years, she has organised four international conferences at City University. She is currently Treasurer and Trustee of the History of Economic Thought Society THETS.

Dr Jeppe Mulichis a Lecturer in Modern History. Jeppe is a global historian of empire and colonialism, especially in the Caribbean and in the Asia-Pacific. Most of his work deals with legal and political aspects of this history, including trans-imperial networks, sovereignty and jurisdictional contestations, resistance and revolution, and the lasting legacies of colonization. He completed his doctoral training at New York University and has broad interests in global history, historical sociology, and international political theory.

Dr Andrew Payne is a Lecturer in Foreign Policy and Security at City, University of London, and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford, where he was previously the Hedley Bull Research Fellow in International Relations. His research examines the influence of domestic politics on US foreign policy, military strategy and civil-military relations. His first book, War on the Ballot: How the Election Cycle Shapes Presidential Decision-Making in War, was published by Columbia University Press in July 2023. His work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including International Security, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Politics, and Contemporary Politics. His writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, The Conversation, and International Affairs. In addition to his academic work, Andrew serves on the board of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).

Dr Margot Tudor is a Lecturer in Foreign Policy and Security. Margot’s work examines the colonial continuities of historical international interventions, specialising in UN peacekeeping missions. She is currently developing projects on 1) humanitarians and field-based misconduct in 1960s Congo; 2) military humanitarianism in historical practice; 3) the field-based creation of peacekeeping identity through racial militarism, and hyper-masculinity during UNEF (1956-1967). Her first book, Blue Helmet Bureaucrats: United Nations Peacekeeping and the Reinvention of Colonialism, 1945-1971, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.

Futures

The new ‘Futures’ series run by City, Modern History explores how historical research can illuminate our understanding of the future, prediction, legacies and temporality.

A Brief History of Equality

Thomas Piketty in conversation with Or Rosenboim

Thursday 24 November 2022

What is the future of inequality? Why looking at history can make us optimistic? How can federalism help overcome the limits of capitalism? In his new bestseller, A Brief History of Equality (Belknap, 2022), the acclaimed economist Prof Thomas Piketty (EHESS and Paris School of Economics) outlines a fascinating new vision for tackling the challenges of economic inequality.

On 24 November, Prof Thomas Piketty joined Dr. Or Rosenboim (City) in conversation about his new book, the history of (in)equality, and the way forward toward a more equal society.

Watch the event recording:

Prof Jenny Andersson (Uppsala University): “Future as World History”, with comments by Dr Lise Butler (City)

The inaugural event of the new ‘Futures’ series.

Watch the event recording:

The Breakup of Yugoslavia as a Global Event: Legacies, History and Memory

May 17th 2022

Speakers:

• Prof. Marie-Janine Calic (Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich) - "The Breakup of Yugoslavia: Global Dimensions"
• Dr. Chris Jones (University of East Anglia) - "Building the post-Cold War world order: France and the Breakup of Yugoslavia"
• Dr. Federico Brusadelli (University of Naples L'Orientale / Polish Institute of Advanced Studies) - "Sovereignty at Stake: the Chinese Communist Party and the Collapse of Yugoslavia"

Chair: Dr. Or Rosenboim (City University, London)

Watch the event recording:

Federalism in a Global Perspective Seminars

Organized by Dr Federico Brusadelli and Dr Or Rosenboim

Sponsored by Centre for Modern History, City, the University of London and The University of Naples “Orientale”

The aim of the seminars is to interrogate the history of the federal idea in a global perspective, putting together interventions from leading scholars whose work focuses on different parts of the world to reveal the varying interpretations of federalism in the twentieth century and the idea’s relevance to contemporary political debates.

Seminar 1: Ideologies of Federalism
11 October 2021, 4 pm (London)

Watch the event recording for Seminar 1:

Seminar 2: Federalism and Empire
12 November 2021, 4 pm (London)

Watch the recording of Seminar 2:

See our archive of past event recordings

If you are a member of the cluster and wish to have your publication included on this page, please email margot.tudor@city.ac.uk

Recent publications by our members:

Tom Davies

Tom Davies. 2024. Rethinking Transnational Activism through Regional Perspectives: Reflections, Literatures and Cases. Cambridge University Press.

Andrew Payne

War on the Ballot: How the Election Cycle Shapes Presidential Decision-Making in War. Columbia University Press.

Margot Tudor

Margot Tudor. 2023. Blue Helmet Bureaucrats United Nations Peacekeeping and the Reinvention of Colonialism, 1945–1971. Cambridge University Press.

Diya Gupta

Diya Gupta. 2023. India in the Second World War: An Emotional History. Hurst and Oxford University Press.

Dina Fainberg

Fainberg, D., 2021.Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lise Butler

Butler, L., 2020. Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970. Oxford University Press.

Butler, L. 2020. ‘Corbynism in Historical Persective’, in Andrew Roe-Crines ed. Corbynism in Perspective. Columbia University Press.

Claudia Jefferies

Pieper, R., de Lozanne Jefferies, C. and Denzel, M., 2019. Mining, Money and Markets in the Early Modern Atlantic: Digital Approaches and New Perspectives. In Mining, Money and Markets in the Early Modern Atlantic (pp. 3-15). Palgrave Macmillan

Chapter 9: Some Determinants of Local Exchange Rates and in Early Modern Mexican Mining Sites, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,  Pages 211-230.

Jeppe Mulich

Mulich, J., 2020. In a Sea of Empires: Networks and Crossings in the Revolutionary Caribbean. Cambridge University Press.

Justin Davis-Smith

Smith, J.D., 2019.100 years of NCVO and voluntary action: idealists and realists. Springer

Davis-Smith, J., 2020. What can history contribute to non-profit education?.Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership,10(4), pp.345-354.