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About Me

Jessica Reinisch is Reader in Modern European History at Birkbeck, University of London.

She is Director of the Centre for the Study of Internationalism at Birkbeck.

She is editor of the journal Contemporary European History, which covers the history of Eastern and Western Europe, including Britain, from 1918 to the present.

She has been a co-organiser of the Beyond Camps and Forced Labour conferences since 2007. The sixth conference took place at Birkbeck in January 2018.

She was Principal Investigator of a collaborative research project, The Reluctant Internationalists (2013-2017), funded by her Wellcome Trust Investigator Award. The project studied the international organisations and networks in twentieth-century Europe through the lens of public health, medicine and medical science. It brought to light a history of overlapping and competing internationalisms built around a variety of political, cultural, religious and economic priorities. Researchers identified a range of political, social, cultural, economic, religious and linguistic factors that determined whether and how local actors thought or acted ‘internationally’, and thus helped to counteract a still widely popular technocratic view of internationalism, which sees logistical or political obstacles as the primary barriers to international cooperation. You can read more about the project’s findings and activities here.

 

Recent Publications

Monographs & Edited volumes

• The Perils of Peace: Public Health in Occupied Germany (Oxford University Press, 2013) – now a free eBook, download here.
• Refugees in Europe, 1919-1959: A Forty Years’ Crisis? (with Matthew Frank) (Bloomsbury, 2017)
• Post-War Reconstruction in Europe: International Perspectives, 1945-1949 (with Mark Mazower and David Feldman) Past and Present Supplement 2011
• The Disentanglement of Populations: Migration, Expulsion and Displacement in postwar Europe, 1944-1949 (with Elizabeth White) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
• Justice, Politics and Memory in Europe after the Second World War: Landscapes after Battle Vol.2 (with David Cesarani, Suzanne Bardgett and Dieter Steinert) (Vallentine Mitchell, 2011)
• Survivors of Nazi persecution in Europe after the Second World War: Landscapes after Battle Vol.1 (with David Cesarani, Suzanne Bardgett and Dieter Steinert) (Vallentine Mitchell, 2010)

Special issues

• Agents of Internationalism, Contemporary European History, Vol.25, No.2, May 2016
• Refugees and the Nation-State in Europe, 1919-1959 (with Matthew Frank), Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.49, No.3, July 2014
• Relief Work in the Aftermath of War, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.43, No.3, July 2008

Articles and chapters

• “Old Wine in New Bottles? UNRRA and the Mid-Century World of Refugees”, in: Matthew Frank and Jessica Reinisch (eds), Refugees in Europe, 1919-1959: A Forty Years’ Crisis? (Bloomsbury, 2017)
• “’The Story Remains the Same?’ Refugees in Europe from the ‘forty years’ crisis’ to today” (with Matthew Frank), in: Matthew Frank and Jessica Reinisch (eds), Refugees in Europe, 1919-1959: A Forty Years’ Crisis? (Bloomsbury, 2017)
• “Agents of Internationalism“, Contemporary European History, Vol.25, No.2, May 2016, 195-205.
• “Forever Temporary’: Migrants in Calais, Then and Now”, The Political Quarterly, published online 18 September 2015, Print edition: Vol.86, No.4, September-December 2015, 515-522.
• History matters… but which one? Every refugee crisis has a context”, History & Policy, published online 29 September 2015, http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/history-matters-but-which-one-every-refugee-crisis-has-a-context
• “Refugees and the Nation-State in Europe, 1919-1959” (co-authored with Matthew Frank), Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.49, No.3, July 2014, 477-490.
• “Auntie UNRRA at the Crossroads”, Past and Present, Vol.218, Supplement 8, 2013, 70-97.
• “Internationalism in relief: the birth (and death) of UNRRA”, Past and Present, Vol.210, Supplement 6, 2011, 258-289.

 

Media Coverage

Social Media

twitter.com/jessicareinisch

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

Eastern Europe, United Kingdom, United States, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

Modern, 20th century

Expertise by Topic