Stefan Berger

Stefan Berger
Born	1964 Langenfeld, Rhineland, West Germany
Occupation	Historian
Known for	Modern and contemporary European history especially of Germany and Britain, nationalism and national identity studies, history of historiography and historical theory, labour history and industrial heritage

Stefan Berger (born 1964) is the Director of the Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, and Chairman of the committee of the Library of the Ruhr Foundation. He is Professor of Social History at the Ruhr University. He specializes in nationalism and national identity studies, historiography and historical theory, comparative labour studies, and the history of industrial heritage.

Biography

From 1985 to 1987 Berger attended the University of Cologne, where he studied history, political science and German literature. In 1990 he graduated with a Phd from the University of Oxford, with a thesis on "The Labour Party and the SPD. A Comparison of their Structure and Development and a Discussion of the Relations Between the Two Movements, 1900 - 1933". He was a lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Plymouth in 1990/91, and from 1991 to 2000 he lectured in the same field at the School of European Studies, University of Wales, Cardiff. Until 2011 he was Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History at the University of Manchester, UK

A significant part of Berger's research and works is on the nationalization of history. Berger was instrumental in the programme ‘Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe (NHIST)’ that the European Science Foundation organized between 2003 and 2008.

Selected works

• 1994: The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900-1931. Oxford: Clarendon Press
• 1997: The Search for Normality: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany since 1800, Berghahn Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57181-620-8
• 1999: Nationalism, Labour and Ethnicity 1870-1939 (with Angel Smith) [1]
• 2004: Inventing the Nation: Germany. London: Hodder Arnold
• 2005: "A Return to the National Paradigm? National History Writing in Germany, Italy, France, and Britain from 1945 to the Present," The Journal of Modern History Vol. 77, No. 3
• 2007: Writing the Nation: a global perspective [2]
• 2008: The Contested Nation: ethnicity, class, religion and gender in national histories (with Chris Lorenz)
• 2008: Narrating the Nation: representations in history, media, and the arts (with Linas Eriksonas and Andrew Mycock) [3]
• 2010: Nationalizing of the Past (with Chris Lorenz)
• 2010: Friendly Enemies: Britain and the GDR, 1949-1990

External links

• Homepage of ESF Scientific Programme "Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Europe (NHIST)"
• Homepage of Stefan Berger at the Institute for Social Movements, RUB