Contact
Biography
I am Professor of Modern History, and work, on a secondment, as as Chief Academic Adviser and Innovation Officer at the UK National Holocaust Museum. I taught history at Cambridge and Manchester for 15 years before joining Nottingham in 2011; and have held visiting appointments at Harvard, Berlin, Munich (IFZ), UPF Barcelona, and the Australian National University.
I have written four academic monographs, ten edited volumes and special issues, and numerous articles dealing with European identity politics, Jewish history, the Holocaust, and the use of photos as historical evidence. I always strive to use insights from academic research for real-world interventions; my specialism is the fight against antisemitism. To this end, I have collaborated with colleagues in Education, Politics, Media Studies, Museum Studies and Human-Computer Interaction. For example, with Gary Mills, I analysed the consequences of a reliance on perpetrator photographs of anti-Jewish violence on UK pupils' attitudes to Jewish history. With Paul Tennent, I developed Mixed Reality experiences to prompt museum visitors to re-imagine Jewish history through Jewish eyes. With Hugo Drochon, I explored the overlap between conspiracy theory thinking and antisemitism. With Claudia Reese, I am publishing on the curatorial challenges of bringing Jewish diaspora history to life. My AHRC-funded multi-disciplinary project "Photography as Political Practice in National Socialism" was selected as anti-racism project of the year 2022 by UKRI.
I have also worked with a range of museums, artists and film-makers nationally and internationally to transform the use of visual media to engage audiences with the Holocaust, Jewish history, and contemporary antisemitism. They include Anat Vogman on the film "Nahariya Magica", about German Jews in Mandate Palestine; Swedish artist Lina Selander on the installation "The Weight of Images"; the Imperial War Museum London's team of the re-design of their permanent Holocaust Gallery; and New York-based 'Tectonic Theater' on the Auschwitz play "Here are Blueberries", among others.
At the National Holocaust Museum, I have curated various multi-media exhibitions and visitor experiences, such as "The Eye as Witness: Recording the Holocaust" (touring exhibition and parallel online learning resource, 2020-22); and "I Say British, You Say Jewish" (an exhibition about antisemitism in a mobile trailer touring UK streets in 2023). I am now working on an new international touring exhibition "The Vicious Circle", to launch on Holocaust Memorial Day 2025, which explores the stories of five Jewish communities from the Nazi era to the present, and the motivations of the pogromists who destroyed them. I also co-lead, with Mark Rusling, the Racism Response Unit, supported by the Anglo-Jewish Association, which offers face-to-face training to combat anti-Jewish racism in schools, on university campuses, in local councils, police forces and in the private sector.
Expertise Summary
Antisemitism as an ideology, and its entangled histories across time and space
National Socialism, in particular its emotional and personal history; amateur photography in the Third Reich.
Cultural history of cities and the built environment in Europe, c. 1850-1945.
Teaching Summary
I normally teach modules on comparative cultural histories of National Socialism and Fascism, and on the experience of ideology in everyday life. Due to my current secondment to the National… read more
Research Summary
I work on the histories of National Socialism and the Holocaust, especially the role of 'ordinary' people in perpetrator societies, the role of visual culture in the dissemniation and normalisation… read more
Recent Publications
I joined the University of Nottingham in 2011, taking up the chair in modern history, after 14 years at the University of Manchester, and a previous ten at the University of Cambridge -- where I had moved after attending school in Germany. I also held visiting appointments at Harvard, the Australian National University, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), the Free University of Berlin, UCL, and, in 2015, the Institute for Contemporary History at Munich. I work on the relationship between culture, ideas and politics in modern European history, teasing out the ideological meanings of cultural practices, which range from urban planning to private photography, from official architecture to the design of industrial objects, and which I have read as evidence to re-think some big concepts such as Enlightenment, modernism, federalism, regionalism, and National Socialism.
I am passionate about impact and engaging with wider publics. Have a look at the new MOOC I have designed with the British Library here. And if you are interested in the Holocaust and photography, which is my latest project, please have a look at our collaboration with the National Holocaust Centre here.
I normally teach modules on comparative cultural histories of National Socialism and Fascism, and on the experience of ideology in everyday life. Due to my current secondment to the National Holocaust Centre and Museum and being the PI on a large AHRC research project, I will not be offering these modules in the foreseeable future. However, I still contribute lectures and classes to team-taught modules for undergraduates and MA students.
I am very interested in teaching beyond the boundaries of the University. I have designed three free Massive Online Open courses, which you can access here:
Propaganda and Ideology in Everyday Life (with the Biriths Library)
Learning from the Past? A Guide for hte Curious Researcher (with the British Library)
Photographing the Holocaust (with the National Holocaust Museum)
In terms of graduate supervision, three of my doctoral students recently gained their PhDs. Sheona Davies wrote on representations of the Teutonic Knights in popular culture in Weimar and Nazi Germany; she then did a post-doc stint on an AHRC project at Swansea on 'Mapping the War', and is now works for the Commission for Looted Art. Victoria Stiles wrote on representations of British imperialism in German print culture, 1918-1945; she has recently completed an AHRC cultural engagement fellowship, supervised by me and the National Holocaust Centre and Museum. Lucila Mallart wrote on the uses and display of the classical and medieval past in the work of the Catalan politician and architect Puig i Cadafalch, and has just curated an exhibition on this topic in Calatunya. I am currently co-supervising two other students: Ms Seonaid Rogers, on a CDA award with the British Museum, on picture postcards of Israel and Palestine; and Ms Alice Tofts, on a CDA with the Imperial War Museum, on personal photos of people persecuted by the Nazi regime.
I welcome inquiries from all students interested in postgraduate work on any aspect of the cultural history, broadly defined, of modern German or European history, or Europe's relations with the wider world, up to 1945, especially in relation to the use of visual sources including photography, identity politics (such as localism, regionalism, political uses of the past), or new approaches to the study of National Socialism, or the role of ideology in everyday life.
Current Research
I work on the histories of National Socialism and the Holocaust, especially the role of 'ordinary' people in perpetrator societies, the role of visual culture in the dissemniation and normalisation of Nazi ideologies, and on the way these histories shaped Jewish experiences and migrations.
From 2022, I have been working on a long term secondment at the UK's National Holocaust Centre and Museum, as chief advisor on a large redevelopment project of permanent exhibitions, a programme of temporary exhibitions, digital resources and pedagogic outreach, which seek to establish a clearer connection between Holocaust history and contemporary antisemitism.
My collaboration with the National Holocaust Museum dates back to an ongoing project, funded by the AHRC (project grant and two follow-on projects), exploring what photography may tell us about the history of National Socialism and the Holocaust. For details, click here to go to the project page, for more information on outputs and impacts. We have also produced a free online resource that presents our findings in an accessible way.
Past Research
The sense of self -- as individuals and as members of imagined communities, of class, nation, gender -- is constituted by an imagination, which, my research argues, is structured by material and visual cultures as well as words. All my work to date, covering a range of examples from European history, from the eighteenth century to the Second World War, explores this nexus. Photographs, paintings, designed objects, architectures all provide clues to how historical actors imaged spaces, such as Heimat/homeland, the city, the region, and nation, and imagined time, the past as well as the future. For details on how I argue these elements payed out in different historical episodes, please click ont he links to summaries of key publications below.
Authenticity: The Cultural History of a Political Concept, Palgrave 2018
Heimat, Region and Empire: Spatial Identities under National Socialism, Palgrave, 2012
German Cities and Bourgeois Modernism, 1890 - 1929, Oxford University Press, 2009.
Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalization and the Built Environment Stanford University Press, 2005.
German Federalism: Past, Present, Future Basingstoke, 2002.
Federalism and Enlightenment in Germany, 1740-1806, London and Ohio, 2000.
Future Research
My next monograph will be a study of the role of private photography, especially family photo albums, in Nazi Germany. Through photos, I explore how people assimilate, appropriate and, on occasion, subvert the political culture generated by the state in their own lived experience. The book will form part of the outcomes of a collaborative, AHRC-funded project called Photography as Political Practice in National Socialism. The project builds on findings we published in a special issue on Photography and German History (Central European History, 2015), and a project with the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich on "Private Lives in National Socialism", a book with CUP.
Recent publications include my short monograph, with Scott Sulzener, called "Photography, Migration, and Identity: A German-Jewish-American Story", and an article with Alice Tofts "Private Photos and Holocaust Testimony: A Difficult Relationship" (Holocaust Studies 2023), and with Gary Mills on Teaching with images: opportunities and pitfalls for Holocaust education (Holocaust Studies 2024).
This research has also fed into a number of national and international touring exhibitions I have co-curated with the National holocaust Museum, such as
* The Eye as Witness: an exhibition that uses photographs and Virtual Reality t oto explore the problems of perpetrator photography of the Holocaust, and contrast this with Jewish photos
* I Say British, You Say Jewish: an exhibition about realities and stereotypes about Jewish identities
* The Vicious Circle: an exhibition that will launch in January 2025 in London, and then go on an international tour, which tells the story of five Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East that were wiped out by pogroms
MAIKEN UMBACH and GARY MILLS, 2023. Teaching with images: Opportunities and pitfalls
for Holocaust education Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History. 30(1), 47–65 UMBACH, MAIKEN and TOFTS, ALICE, 2022. Jewish Photos and Holocaust Testimony: A Difficult Relationship Holocaust Studies. 29(3), MAIKEN UMBACH and ELIZABETH HARVEY, 2015. Photography and Twentieth-Century German History Central European History. 48(3), 1-13 UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2010. Moderne zwischen Heimat und Globalisierung. In: AIGNER, ANITA, ed., Vernakulare Moderne: Grenzüberschreitungen in der Architektur um 1900 Transkript Verlag. 231-262
UMBACH, M., 2009. The modernist imagination of place and the politics of regionalism: the case of Puig i Cadafalch and early twentieth century Barcelona. In: LANDY, J. and SALER, M., eds., The re-enchantment of the world: secular magic in a rational age Stanford University Press. 81-101
UMBACH, M., 2009. German cities and bourgeois modernism, 1890-1924 Oxford University Press.
UMBACH, MAIKEN, ed., 2008. Municipalism, Regionalism, Nationalism. Hybrid Identity Formations and the Making of Modern Europe
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2007. The civilising process and the emergence of the bourgeois self: music chambers in Wilhelmine Germany. In: FULBROOK, M, ed., Un-civilising Processes: Excess and Transgression in German Society and Culture Rodopi.
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2007. Culture and Buergerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany. In: SCOTT, H.; SIMMS, B., ed., Cultures of Power in Europea during the Long Eigtheenth Century Cambridge University Press.
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2006. Regionalism in modern European nation-states. In: HEWITSON, M. and BAYCROFT, T., eds., What is a Nation? Oxford University Press.
UMBACH, MAIKEN and HUPPAUF, BERND, eds., 2005. Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalisation and the Built Environment Stanford University Press.
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2005. Federalism in Europe: History and Future Options. In: DREW, J, ed., Redefining Europe Rodopi.
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2005. A tale of second cities: autonomy, culture and the law in Hamburg and Barcelona in the long nineteenth century American Historical Review. 110(3), 659-692
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2004. Memory and historicism: reading between the lines of the built environment, c.1900 Representations. 88(Fall), 26-54
UMBACH, MAIKEN, ed., 2002. German Federalism: Past, Present, Future Palgrave Macmillan.
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2002. The vernacular international: Heimat, modernism and the global market in early twentieth-century Germany’ National Identities. 4(1),
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2002. Classicism, Enlightenment and the other: thoughts on decoding eighteenth-century visual culture Art History. 25(3),
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 2001. Made in Germany. In: SCHULZE, H and FRANCOIS, E., eds., Deutsche Erinnerungsorte II. Beck.
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 1999. Reich, Region und Föderalismus als Denkfiguren in der Frühen und der Späten Neuzeit. In: LANGEWIESCHE, D. and SCHMIDT, G., eds., Die Föderative Nation: Deutschlandbilder von der Reformation bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg Oldenbourg.
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 1998. Visual culture, scientific images and German small-state politics in the Enlightenment’ Past & Present. 158,
UMBACH, MAIKEN, 1998. The Politics of Sentimentality and the German Fürstenbund The Historical Journal. 41,
UMBACH, MAIKEN, Federalism and enlightenment in Germany, 1740-1806 London : Hambledon, 2000..