• Department of History
• War, State and Society
• Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940 - 1945
• Contact details
• Staff associated with the project
• About the project
• Conference
• Project Workshops
• Project Publications
• Staff Publications
• Studentships
• Selected Bibliography
• News and Events
• Project Exhibitions
• Comparative Overview
• Britain
• France
• Germany
• Italy

Staff working on the project

• Professor Richard Overy, University of Exeter

• Professor Andrew Knapp, University of Reading

• Dr Claudia Baldoli, Newcastle University

Associate Research Fellows:

• Dr Vanessa Chambers

• Dr Stephan Glienke
  
  Staff contact details

Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter, where he has taught since 2004. He was previously Professor of Modern History at King's College, London. He has worked extensively on air power and the Second World War and is currently preparing a major study of bombing during the war. His previous books include The Air War 1939-1945 (2nd ed 2006), The Battle of Britain (2000), Bomber Command 1939-1945 (1997) and Why the Allies Won (2nd ed 2006). He has supervised research on air power issues and contributed regularly to conferences and workshops on bombing. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for the Second World War Experience, and was for four years a Trustee of the RAF Museum, Hendon. His book Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia was winner of the 2005 Wolfson Prize for History and the 2005 Hessell Titlman prize. His most recent publications are A Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars (2009) and 1939: Countdown to War (2009). He is currently writing ‘The Bombing War, 1939-1940’, to be published in 2012. In 2010 he won the James Doolittle Award from MIT for his contributions to aviation history.

Andrew Knapp Andrew Knapp is Professor of French Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Reading . His publications include (as author), Parties and the Party System in France (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and Le gaullisme après de Gaulle (Seuil, 1996), and (as editor and contributor) The Uncertain Foundation: France at the Liberation, 1944-47 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

His article on ‘The destruction and liberation of Le Havre in modern memory', appeared in War in History , 14.4, November 2007, pp. 476-498, as well as in the Cahiers du Centre d'Études d'Histoire de la Défense , 37 (2009). He has also published, with Lindsey Dodd, ‘How Many Frenchmen did you Kill? British Bombing Policy Towards France (1940-1945)' in French History , 22(4), December 2008, pp. 469-492. He is currently working, with Claudia Baldoli, on a comparative study of the Allied bombing of France and Italy .

Claudia Baldoli ( Laurea University of Venice, PhD London School of Economics) is Senior Lecturer in History at Newcastle University . Her publications include Exporting Fascism: Italian Fascists and Britain 's Italians in the 1930s (Berg, 2003) and A History of Italy (Palgrave, 2009). In 2004 she published a critical edition, in Italian, of the writings of Vera Brittain and Marie Louise Berneri on the bombing of civilians in the Second World War. Her article, with Marco Fincardi, on ‘Italian Society under Anglo-American Bombs: Propaganda, Experience and Legend, 1940-1945' was published by The Historical Journal in 2009. She is currently working, with Andrew Knapp, on a comparative study of the Allied bombing of France and Italy .

Vanessa Chambers was an associate research fellow from January 2008 to January 2009. Vanessa's PhD theses was entitled ‘Fighting Chance' – War, Popular Belief and British Society 1900-1951', and examined the impact of war on popular belief in British society and culture in the first half of the twentieth-century, identifying change and continuity over time. She is particularly interested in the growth in belief in spiritualism, recourse to fortune-tellers and reliance on aspects of the supernatural during wartime. Her PhD thesis has been accepted for publication by Liverpool University Press.

Stephan Glienke was an associate research fellow from October 2007 to September 2009. Stephan´s previous research explored the ways in which German society dealt with the results of allied bombing and with the history of the Nazi-régime. His PhD theses was entitled "Ungesuehnte Nazijustiz (1959-1962). Zur Geschichte der Aufarbeitung nationalsozialistischer Justizverbrechen", and examined how German society dealt with the crimes that had been committed by the justicary of the `Third Reich. He is currently employed by the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony on a project investigating the Nazi past of Landtag members.

The Bombing of Germany 1940 - 1945