Dr Joseph Cronin

Profile

I specialise in modern German, Jewish and East European history. My research focuses on Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust, and on Jews who found refuge from Nazi persecution in South Asia. I’m also interested in the histories of antisemitism, European socialism and, most broadly, the ways in which political decisions, policies and ideologies affect the lives of ordinary people.

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

• HST5391 - A Century of Extremes: Germany 1890 - 1990

Research

Research Interests:

My first book explored the large-scale migration of Jews from the former Soviet Union to Germany between 1990 and 2005, and the impact this made on Jewish communities. I have also published on Jewish identities in postwar West Germany, and on Jewish refugees in British India during the Second World War. Currently, I am pursuing a project on Nazi policy towards Jews in the Free City of Danzig.

Publications

Books:

Russian-speaking Jews in Germany’s Jewish Communities, 1990–2005 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

Chapters and articles:

‘The Bitburg affair and the beginnings of Jewish activism in 1980s West Germany’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 65, no. 1 (2020): 167–184

‘Community responses to the immigration of Russian-speaking Jews to Germany, 1990–2005’, in Jay Geller and Michael Meng (eds), Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020)

‘Framing the refugee experience: Reflections on German-speaking Jews in British India, 1938–1947’, German Historical Institute London Bulletin, 41.2 (2019)

‘Wladimir Kaminer and Jewish identity in “Multikulti” Germany’, Skepsi, 10 (2018), 65–77

‘Controversies surrounding the excavation at Börneplatz, Frankfurt am Main, 1987’, Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, 22.2–3 (2016), 172–84

‘The impact of the 1985 “Fassbinder controversy” on Jewish identity in Germany’, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 24.1 (2016), 67–81

Reviews and blogs:

‘Endlessly returning: Review of Superior: The Return of Race Science’, Patterns of Prejudice 54, no. 4 (2020): 459–461

‘Teaching the Holocaust in a “post-factual” world’, Wiener Library Blog (2018)

‘Still an opium? Contemporary Marxists versus Karl Marx on the question of religion’, LSE Religion and Global Society (2018)

‘Review of The Holocaust: A New History’, Reviews in History (2017)

Supervision

I welcome applications from candidates wishing to pursue doctoral research modern German and Jewish history, including but not limited to:

• 20th century Germany
• The Holocaust
• Postwar Jewish history
• History of antisemitism

Public Engagement

Podcast: ‘Black Germans under the Nazi Regime’, October 2020

Lecture: ‘Forgiveness and Retribution: The Holocaust in Popular Culture’, July 2020