Department of History

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Elizabeth Harvey

Professor of History, Faculty of Arts

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Biography

I joined the University of Nottingham in 2005, having previously held posts at the Universities of Liverpool, Salford and Dundee. In 2004 I held a visiting professorship at the University of Vienna and in 2008 I was again at the University of Vienna as a visiting scholar. From 2014 to 2017 I was Chair of the German History Society.

Since 2013 I have been a member of the Historikerkommission appointed by the German Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs to investigate the history of the Reich Labour Ministry during the National Socialist era. Within this project I have embarked on research on forced labour from the perspective of gender history. Since 1 September 2017 I have been pursuing this research supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, which ends on 31 August 2020.

Together with Maiken Umbach, I am also involved in a project on the history of photography in 20th-century Germany, looking particularly at the relationship between professional and amateur photography in Nazi Germany and at the photographic documentation of population transfers and the experience of displacement.

From 2012-2020 I was a member of the Wissenschaftlicher Beirat of the Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin. In spring 2015 I spent three months as a visiting researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich as part of the collaborative project funded by the Leibniz-Gesellschaft 'Private Life in Nazi Germany'.

Since 2017 I have been a member of the international advisory committee for the English translation of the multi-volume documents edition project 'Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland' run jointly by the University of Freiburg and the Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin. The project is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. From 1 September 2020 I will be on leave of absence from the University of Nottingham in order to join the team producing the English-language series 'Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by Nazi Germany' as project lead.

Expertise Summary

Areas of supervision for prospective research students: twentieth-century Germany; comparative perspectives in twentieth-century European social and cultural history, particularly in relation to gender, nationalism and imperialism; youth and youth movements; gender, war and reconstruction; the history of visual culture; the comparative history of welfare.

Teaching Summary

I have been on research leave since September 2017 supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.

I regularly teach a year 2 module on European Fascisms, comparing the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Romania and Britain, exploring the relations between state and society in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and examining Fascist and Nazi warfare, conquest and genocide.

I have regularly offered a Special Subject, entitled 'From Racial State to Reconstruction: Women and Gender Relations in Germany 1933-1949', examining the history of Nazi Germany and Germany under post-war Allied occupation from a perspective of gender.

Research Summary

I am an historian of twentieth-century Germany and Europe with a focus on gender history and on the period of the Second World War.

My current research, supported by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, involves applying a gender history perspective to the history of forced labour in Second World War Europe. This has developed in conjunction with the wider project being carried out by the research team supervised by the Independent Historians' Commission on the History of the Reich Labour Ministry during the National Socialist Era that was appointed in 2013 by the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

In recent years I have also been active in a collaborative project with the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin on 'The Private in Nazi Germany' funded by the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft ('Das Private im Nationalsozialismus'). I co-organized a conference 'The Private in Nazi Germany' at the University of Nottingham in June 2016 and the volume arising from this conference was published by Cambridge University Press in summer 2019 under the title Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany, edited by Elizabeth Harvey, Johannes Hürter, Maiken Umbach and Andreas Wirsching.

A further strand of my research focuses on the history of photography in 20th-century Germany. I have co-organized two workshops on the history of amateur and professional photography and on the use of 'perpetrator photographs' in museums and exhibitions. This forms part of the ongoing project funded by Nottingham's Centre for Advanced Studies on 'Living For the Camera' (with Prof. Maiken Umbach). My own research on the history of photography has involved work on female photojournalists in Nazi Germany and is now focusing on the photographic documentation of the Nazi resettlement of ethnic Germans from eastern and southeastern Europe 1939-41.

My current research-related activities and institutional affiliations:

  • member of the Independent Historians' Commission on the History of the Reich Labour Ministry during the National Socialist Era
  • member of the international advisory committee for the edition project Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany
  • member of the international advisory committee of the Bundeskanzler-Willy-Brandt-Stiftung
  • member of the editorial advisory board of the Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte
  • member of the editorial advisory board of Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften
  • member of the editorial advisory board of Women's History Review

Supervision

Areas of supervision for prospective research students: twentieth-century Germany; comparative perspectives in twentieth-century European social and cultural history, particularly in relation to gender, nationalism and imperialism; youth and youth movements; gender, war and reconstruction.

I have supervised doctoral work on the history of consumer culture in Britain and Germany and on the history of women's organizations in the Nottingham region. This has included a Collaborative Doctoral Award partnership with Nottingham City Museums and Galleries which focused on the John Player Advertising Archive: the project focused on the promotional and advertising campaigns undertaken by Player's between the 1950s and the 1980s and the holder of this award, Daniel O'Neill, graduated with his PhD in August 2015.

I am currently co-supervising the PhD students Alice Tofts (Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with the Imperial War Museum) and Nadine Tauchner (University of Leicester).

Past Research

My areas of research hitherto have included the history of the welfare state in Weimar Germany; youth organizations and political culture in inter-war Germany; gender and nationalist movements in central and eastern Europe; and women's involvement in National Socialist expansionism in eastern Europe and the implementation of Germanization policies in occupied Poland.

Future Research

In addition to my work on twentieth-century Germany, my broader interests in 20th-century gender history and cultural history have fed into collaborative projects based in the Nottingham region, notably the partnership with Nottingham City Museums and Galleries to develop the John Player's Advertising Archive. This was supported by AHRC-funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership (2009-11) and continued with an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award (October 2011 -) held by Daniel O'Neill, who graduated in August 2015. The PhD project examines the promotional and sponsorship campaigns undertaken by John Player's in the 1960s and 1970s in the context of a critical history of smoking, advertising and consumer culture.

Department of History

University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

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