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About
Dr Artemis Photiadou is Assistant Professor in International History. Her research focuses on twentieth-century political and intelligence history, with broad interests in Britain, Germany, Cyprus, and Greece.
Dr Photiadou’s current book project, Interrogating Nazism: Spies, Soldiers and War Criminals in Second World War Britain (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press), examines British practices of interrogation during and immediately after the Second World War.
Dr Photiadou leads the department’s research cluster on Conflict and Identity in Europe since the 18th Century, with her broader research interests covering the politics of memory and national identity, the treatment of suspected political enemies by states, and the relationship between violence, legality, and state legitimacy. Her work on pertinent topics has been published in The English Historical Review (forthcoming), The Historical Journal, Journal of Contemporary History, and Intelligence and National Security.
At LSE, Dr Photiadou teaches courses on British foreign policy and international history. For her teaching, she has been nominated by students for several awards, including for Inspirational Teaching, for Excellent Welfare and Pastoral Support, and for Excellent Feedback and Communication.
Before joining LSE, she trained as a lawyer and worked in research roles at Full Fact, UCL Constitution Unit, and LSE Public Policy Group. From 2015 to 2022, she served as Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. She currently serves on the editorial board of LSE EUROPP and is a Research Affiliate at the Hellenic Observatory.
Other titles: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Representative
Expertise
Britain and Europe; European Political Regimes; Intelligence History
Research
- LSE International History Department Class Teacher Awards (highly commended, 2019).
- LSE Students’ Union Teaching Excellence Awards (nominated 2019, 2020 and 2021).
- LSE PhD Studentship, 2015-2019.
Teaching
Dr Artemis Photiadou teaches the following courses
At undergraduate level
At postgraduate level
Engagement and impact
News
Dr Artemis Photiadou publishes new article, 'The ABCs of Nazism: The Political Screening and Classification of German Prisoners of War in Britain in the Aftermath of the Second World War'
In her recent article, published in The English Historical Review (Oxford Academic), she discusses how nearly half a million German prisoners of war were in Britain when the Second World War ended, all of whom were sorted into one of three categories: anti-Nazi, unpolitical, or Nazi, correspondingly known as A, B, C.
This article focuses on the screening process that determined in which category an individual belonged. Drawing on approximately 400,000 screening outcomes between 1945 and 1947, it shows that the process was developed in a wartime intellectual environment that attributed National Socialism to a militant German ‘national character’.
Under those initial assumptions, many of those interrogated were classified as Nazi. However, the system quickly moved towards a more situational interpretation of ideology, turning screening into a convenient tool that facilitated practical policy objectives, rather than a mechanism of ideological classification.
Read the article in full HERE