Research Interests
David Motadel is Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He works on the history of modern Europe and Europe’s entanglements with the wider world.
He is the author of a book on the history of Muslims under German rule in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2014), rangingfrom 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) and of a book on global history of the middle class (Princeton University Press, 2019).
Among his current projects is a comparative study of the European empires in the era of the Second World War, 1935-1948. It traces theinvolvement of the world’s colonized peoples in the conflict, examining the ways in which the war reconfigured Europe’s relations with the world.
His articles have been published in a number of journals, including Past and Present, the American Historical Review, the Historical Journal, the Journal of Contemporary History and the Journal of Global History. His work has been translated into ten languages.
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), and a Chancellor’s Fellowship in History at the University of Edinburgh (2015-16). He joined the LSE in 2016 as Assistant Professor of International History and was promoted to Associate Professor of International History in 2019. Dr Motadel has held visiting positions at Harvard (2007-8), Yale (2009-10), and Oxford (2011-12). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 2018, he was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for History.
David Motadel 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 Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, and The London Review of Books, among others.
In early 2021, he joined the Advisory Board of the Hans Blix’s Centre for the History of International Relations at Stockholm University.
Prizes
• Philip Leverhulme Prize, 2018-20
• 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 the LSE Excellence in Education Award (2018) and the LSE Promotions Teaching Prize (2019).
Other titles: LSE-Columbia University Double MSc in International and World History Programme Director; Coordinator of LSE-Columbia University Double Degree Dissertations (HY458)