The Centre for the Study of War, State and Society

The Centre for the Study of War, State and Society was established in 2005, providing a forum for staff and postgraduates in a number of disciplines linked by their shared interest in the impact of war on society. More about the Centre.

Research

The Centre builds on the University's reputation for high quality research in military and naval history, area studies and politics. Based in the Department of History, the Centre brings together a number of internationally renowned academics working on a broad range of issues, linked by their common interest in war as an agent of social, political and cultural change. Research conducted within the Centre thus has powerful contemporary relevance.

Workshops

The Centre's workshops are designed to provide an opportunity for invited scholars to engage in active discussion about current research interests.

More about the Centre's workshop series

New Publications:

The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe
James Mark

While the West has repeatedly been sold images of a victorious people’s revolution in 1989, the idea that dictatorship has been truly overcome is foreign to many in the former Communist bloc. In this wide-ranging work, James Mark examines how new democratic societies are still divided by the past.

To hear James discuss this book on BBC Radio 4, please click on the following link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b011jv8c (about half way through the programme).

The Unfinished Revolution

More staff publications.

Latest News:

Conferences:

Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940 - 1945
10-13 September 2009
Queen's Building, Streatham Campus, University of Exeter

Conference report

Research Links

The Centre has recently forged ties with its Canadian cousin, the University of New Brunswick 's Gregg Centre for War and Society, a long-established research centre directed by Professor Mark Milner, which provides a forum for conflict studies and military history. More about Martin Thomas' visit to the Gregg Centre.

Re-discovering poetry and song from World War One

First World War poet Ivor Gurney is the subject of a major research project led by the Centre for South West Writing at the University of Exeter. More about the project.

Prizes

Congratulations to former Exeter student Alison Carrol, currently a Junior Research Fellow at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. Alison has been awarded the Etienne Baluze Prize for European local history (Prix Baluze d'histoire européenne locale) for her Exeter PhD thesis, completed in 2008 and supervised by Professor Martin Thomas. The Prize is awarded every two years to a thesis that seeks to reconceptualise European history from a regional perspective. It is organised by the Association des Amis du Musée du Cloître André Mazeyrie deTulle, and the jury is chaired by Daniel Roche (College de France) and includes historians from France, Britain, Italy and Germany.

PhD student Thomas Beaumont has been awarded a £750 research grant from the Society for the Study of French History (SSFH) to fund an extended period of research in archives based in and around Paris. Supervised by Martin Thomas, Thomas Beaumont's research focuses on the role of communism within railway trade unionism in France between the two world wars. A research report is to shortly appear in the journal French History .