About
David Motadel is Associate Professor of International History at the LSE. He works on the history of modern Europe and Europe’s global entanglements.
He is the author of a book on the history of Muslims under German rule in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2014; translated into ten languages), ranging from North Africa and the Balkans to the Caucasus and the Crimea, and the editor of a volume on Islam in the European Empires (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Among his current projects is a global history of Europe’s empires in the era of the Second World War, 1935-1948, tentatively entitled Global War, which is under contract with Penguin Press (Allen Lane) in the UK and with Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US. Some first results were published as The Global Authoritarian Moment and the Revolt Against Empire in the American Historical Review.
His other research field is the history of global political relations and the world order in the age of empire. He is the author of The Shah’s Great Tour: Global Monarchy in the Imperial Age (Oxford University Press, 2026), which traces the story of two Persian monarchs who roamed the courtly world of the fin de siècle, from the Ottoman borderlands to the shores of Scotland, to offer insights into the relationships between the world’s sovereigns in an age of European domination. Building on this work, he wrote a more general monograph on royal encounters and world order in the age of empire (Wallstein, 2024). It emerged from the Ernst Kantorowicz Lecture which he was invited to give in 2023. He also co-edited a volume, Unconquered States: Non-European Powers in the Imperial Age (Oxford University Press, 2025), which examines the struggles for sovereignty of the few nominally independent non-Western states – China, Ethiopia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Siam – in the age of empire.
Taken together, David Motadel’s work seeks to study European history comparatively and to enhance our understanding of the history of Europe’s relations with the wider world, drawing on archival research in different continents and sources in different languages. Based on this broader interest in Europe’s global entanglements, he has edited an article forum, entitled European History after the Global Turn, which was published in the Annales (French and English editions). An extended version of the forum, a book entitled Globalizing Europe: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2025; translations are in production), followed.
David Motadel also has a more general interest in global history. His co-authored article The Futures of Global History, published in the Journal of Global History in 2018, led to a lively debate in the field. He is the co-editor of The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire (Princeton University Press, 2019), the editor of Revolutionary World: Global Upheaval in the Modern Age (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and the co-editor of Global Social History (Special Issue of The Historical Journal, 2024).
Finally, like most historians, he has a more general interest in the philosophy of history. His essay The Political Role of the Historian, published in 2023, which offers thoughts on the value of historical studies to society, has been widely discussed.
His articles have been published in numerous journals, including Past and Present, the American Historical Review, the Historical Journal, the Journal of Contemporary History, the Journal of Global History, and the Annales.
David Motadel also regularly writes on history and current affairs for newspapers and magazines. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books, Literary Review, among others.
Biography
David Motadel studied in Germany, Switzerland, and England. He completed his MPhil (2006) and PhD (2010) in History at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar. His doctoral dissertation was awarded several prizes, including the Prince Consort Prize and Seeley Medal of the University of Cambridge for the best history dissertation of the year. He subsequently took up a Research Fellowship in History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge (2010-15). He joined the LSE in 2016 as Assistant Professor of International History and became Associate Professor of International History in 2019. Dr Motadel has held visiting positions at Harvard (2007-8), Yale (2009-10), Oxford (2011-12), Sciences Po (2018-19), and the Sorbonne (2018-19). He was also a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (2019-20) and at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (2022-23). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 2018, he was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for History.
Prizes
• Philip Leverhulme Prize, 2018
• Fraenkel Prize, 2014
• Walter Laqueur Prize, 2014
• Prince Consort Prize and Seeley Medal of the University of Cambridge, 2011
• Doctoral Dissertation Prize of the British International History Group, 2011
• Doctoral Dissertation Prize of the German Historical Institute London, 2011
• Essay Prize of the German History Society and the Royal Historical Society, 2007
A dedicated teacher, David Motadel has also been awarded both the LSE Excellence in Education Award and the LSE Promotions Teaching Prize.
Other titles: Masters Examinations Board Chair & GSBE rep
Expertise
Modern European History, History of Europe’s Relations with the Wider World, Global History
Teaching
Dr David Motadel usually teaches the following courses in the Department:
At undergraduate level:
HY120 Historical Approaches to the Modern World
HY332 Interwar worlds: the cultural consequences of the First World War
At postgraduate level:
HY458 LSE-Columbia University Double Degree Dissertation
HY471 European Empires and Global Conflict, 1935-1948
Dr Motadel also supervises the following PhD students:
| Research student | Provisional thesis title |
| Matthew Cockerill | TBC |
| Mairead Costello | Global Pilgrims: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the British Empire, c. 1869-1914 |
| Omar Nasr | The British Empire and Islam in the Second World War |
| Michele Pajero | TBC |
| Fabio Sappino | Eritrean colony and its foreign policy with it's neighbours. |
| Francesca Mascanzoni | TBC |
Former PhD students:
| PhD graduates | Thesis title |
| Katherine Arnold(2021) | German Natural History Collectors in Southern Africa, 1815-1867 |
| Yorai Linenberg (2022) | Jewish Soldiers, Nazi Captors: The Experience of American and British Jewish POWs in German Captivity in the Second World War |
Engagement and impact
Journalism (Selection)
- 'Are we at a turning point in world history?', The Guardian (28 January 2025).
- My Husband the War Criminal, The New York Review of Books(22 September 2022).
- Nazis on the Run,The New York Review of Books(2 December 2021).
- The Reich or the Red. Communism and the Second World War, Times Literary Supplement(24 September 2021).
- Vaccine hesitancy doesn't stop herd immunity, The New York Times(29 April 2021).
- High minds, low politics The lives of four revolutionary thinkers, Times Literary Supplement(16 October 2020).
- What Do the Hohenzollerns Deserve?, The New York Review of Books(26 March 2020).
- The Myth of Middle-Class Liberalism, The New York Times(22 January 2020).
- The Far Right Says There’s Nothing Dirtier Than Internationalism — But They Depend on It, The New York Times(3 July 2019).
- Losing their Religion, Literary Review476 (June 2019).
- Persistent Chill, Times Literary Supplement5995 (23 February 2018).
- The United States Was Never Immune to Fascism. Not Then, Not Now, The Guardian(online, 17 August 2017; print, 19 August 2017).
- Anarchy Loosed upon the World, Times Literary Supplement 5936 (6 January 2017).
- Waves of Authoritarianism, History Today(November 2016).
- Academics of Violence, Times Literary Supplement5879 (4 December 2015), 10-11.
- Patrons of Faith, The New York Times(24 May 2015), SR 6.
- Berlin to Bombay, Review of ‘Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals across Empire’ by Kris Manjapra, Literary Review429 (1 March 2015), 29-30.
- Ancestors of the Jihadist State, The New York Times(24 September 2014), A 31.
- Broken Idols, Review of ‘The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam’ by James Noyes, Times Literary Supplement5804 (27 June 2014), 25.
- Shortcuts (The Crimean Tatars), The London Review of Books36, 8 (17 April 2014), 23.
- India’s Enemy’s Enemy, Review of ‘His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire’ by Sugata Bose, Times Literary Supplement5682 (24 February 2012), 27.
- Waves of Revolution, History Today61, 4 (2011), 3-4.
- Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908-1918 by Michael A. Reynolds, Times Literary Supplement5639 (29 April 2011), 27.
- The End in Iran, Review of ‘Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi’ism, Times Literary Supplement (25 June 2010).