The University of Sheffield
Department of History

Dr. Holger Nehring, M.A. (Tuebingen), D. Phil. (Oxon.)

Reader in Contemporary European History [post-1945 British and German history, history of violence, historical peace research]

[On research leave, semester 2 2011-12]

Photo of Dr. Holger Nehring

Email: h.nehring@sheffield.ac.uk
Room: Jessop West: 3.15 | Telephone: (0114) 22 22588
Office Hours, Spring 2011-12: On Research Leave

Biography


Holger Nehring studied at Tübingen University (Germany), the London School of Economics and at Oxford (as a Rhodes scholar). Before joining the Sheffield History Department in March 2006, he taught at University and Pembroke Colleges and held a junior research fellowship at St. Peter's College, Oxford. His main research interests lie in the social, political and cultural history of post-World War II Western Europe, with a special emphasis on the social history of the Cold War in Britain and Germany since 1945, and in historical peace research. He has been particularly interested in bridging the artificial gaps between different areas of history writing and in applying insights from sociology and anthropology to this period of history. He has held a number of visiting fellowships: He has twice been a visiting fellow at the Peace History Programme at the Forum for Contemporary History, Oslo, and was based at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the body that awards the Nobel Peace Prize; in 2009 he has been visiting fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Columbus, OH, USA and at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. In 2010, he will be based at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris as a professeur invité. He has, since March 2006, served as the Associate Editor of the journal Contemporary European History and has also been affiliated with the EU-funded Marie Curie programme on 'European Protest Movements since the Cold War'. Together with Mike Foley and Benjamin Ziemann, he founded the Centre for Peace History at the University of Sheffield.

Since November 2009, he is also one of the editors of the book series 'Frieden und Krieg. Beiträge zur Historischen Friedensforschung' [Peace and War. Contributions to Historical Peace Research], published with Klartext-Verlag, Essen. He is also member of the executive committee of the journal 'Wissenschaft und Frieden', the leading interdisciplinary academic journal for peace research, peace politics and peace movement issues in Germany today.

He currently serves as the chairman of the Arbeitskreis Historische Friedensforschung/German Association for Peace Research.

Membership of Professional Bodies

 

Research


Current Research
Holger Nehring has just completed a monograph on the British and West German protests against nuclear weapons in the late 1950s and early 1960s to Oxford University Press for publication. The book seeks to offer a novel look at post-war British and West German history during this period. Instead of presenting a comparative history of the movement organisations, it explores the impact of international relations on domestic political and social change and shows how the movement activists voiced concerns about security that differed significantly from those of their governments. With generous support from the AHRC's Research Leave Scheme, Holger Nehring is putting the finishing touches on a new book-length project: a history of the peace movement in 1980s' Germany, entitled 'The Last Battle of the Cold War'. The book will rely on a variety of social movement sources that have only recently become available. Holger Nehring has just completed editing a journal theme issue on peace and European exceptionalism in the twentieth century (together with Helge Pharo from the University of Oslo). In January 2008, he appeared on a documentary on the fiftieth anniversary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in BBC Radio 4's Archive Hour. More recently, Holger Nehring has become interested in conceptualising the Cold War as a `war of the imagination´, bringing together philosophy, the history of science and technology, critical theory and history to come to a novel understanding of this period in world history


Research Interests
The focus of Holger Nehring's research has been the relationship between governments and citizens in a variety of areas and from a variety of perspectives (political theory, sociology, social and cultural history). He has a longstanding interest in the history of peace and political violence, but is also interested in bridging the artificial boundaries between disciplines to come to a better understanding of the ways in which meaning is generated in societies. First, he is particularly interested in the comparative and transnational history of protests and social movements in this period (especially during the 1960s and 1970s) and in the Cold War as an 'war of the imagination'. Second, he has recently developed an interest in historical concepts of statehood and governance, especially in the history of taxation. He is a member of the network on tax history.


Research Supervision
Holger Nehring is keen to supervise students interested in post-1945 European (including British) history, in particular the political, social and cultural history of the Cold War, the history of protest movements in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s and notions of 'security' in society and government. He also welcomes proposals from students wishing to work on the history of government in post-1945 Britain and West Germany.


Current PhD Students

In addition, he has supervised MA dissertations on British defence intellectuals, the British New Left, Cold War liberalism, British Latin-American relations and the rethinking of the Cold War international system.

 

Administrative Roles and Responsibilities

 

Selected Publications