PhD Destinations

MPhil/PhD International History

London provides a number of incredible resources if you are a historian.

If you are active both socially and academically then you can have a very profitable experience as a PhD student at LSE.

This is a list of the positions that some of our recent research students went on to secure after they successfully completed their PhD.

2023

Grant Golub

Thesis: The Warrior-Politicians: Henry L. Stimson, the War Department, and the Politics of American Grand Strategy during World War II.

Supervisor: Professor Matthew Jones

Placement: Assistant Professor of American History, Department of National Security and Strategy, SSL

Alexandra Penler

Thesis: The Quiet Diplomat: Diplomat's Wives and the Origins of Public Diplomacy, 1924-1980

Supervisor: Professor Matthew Jones

Placement: Digital Communications Officer, German Marshall Fund of the United States

Ben Sayle

Thesis: Reconsidering The Edwardian Radical Right 1903-1918

Supervisor: Professor David Stevenson

Placement: GTA - IH, LSE

2022

Hamish Andrew McDougall

Thesis: Staying Alive: New Zealand, Britain and European Integration, 1960-85

Supervisor: Professor N. Piers Ludlow

Placement: Excecutive Director, Institute of International Affairs, NZ/

William Mitchell

Thesis: The Whig Idea of Europe, 1685-1705

Supervisor: Dr Paul Stock

Placement: Guest Teacher, IHD, LSE

Thomas Adam Wilkinson

Thesis: Youth movements and mobilisations in post-colonial India, circa 1930-1970

Supervisor: Dr Taylor Sherman

Placement: Policy Officer, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Rishika Yadav

Thesis: The boys up north': a history of South Africa's cape corps and the Indian and Malay corps in the Second World War 1940-1946

Supervisor: Professor Joanna Lewis

Placement: Fellow in the History of Africa, IHD, LSE/

2021

Katherine Arnold

Thesis: German natural history collectors in Southern Africa, 1815-1867

Supervisors: Professor Joanna Lewis & Dr David Motadel

Placement: Lecturer, Department of History, University of Liverpool

Alexandre Dab

Thesis: The origins of the post-Cold War order in the Middle East: France, Britain, the European Community and transatlantic relations, 1978-1982

Supervisor: Professor Piers Ludlow

Placement: Guest Teacher, IHD, LSE/

Seung Mo Kang

Thesis: The crafting of the Treaty of Peace with Japan, 1945-1951

Supervisor: Professor Antony Best

Placement: Research Fellow - Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy

Yorai Linenberg

Thesis: Jewish soldiers, Nazi captors: the experience of American and British Jewish POWs in German captivity in the Second World War

Supervisor: Professor Steven Casey

Placement: Honorary Research Fellow, Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism

Gaurav Sud

Thesis: Disinvestment? Out of the question. Managing German business subsidiaries in apartheid South Africa during the tenure of P.W. Botha, 1978-1989

Supervisor: Professor Joanna Lewis

Placement: Freelance Management Consultant, Germany

2020

Molly Avery

Thesis: The Latin American Anticommunist International: Chile, Argentina and Central America, 1977-1984.

Supervisor: Dr Tanya Harmer

Placement: Lecturer in the History of the Americas, University of Sheffield

Caroline Green

Thesis: The impact of colonialism on human rights diplomacy: Britain’s colonial legacy and the UN agenda for the advancement of women 1950-1975

Supervisor: Professor Joanna Lewis

Placement: ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, International Relations Department, LSE

Benjamin Heckscher

Thesis: The socialist movement for the United States of Europe: transnational socialism and the launching of the early European institutions

Supervisor: Professor N. Piers Ludlow

Placement: International School of Estonia

Judith Jacob

Thesis: From Kartosuwiryo to Sungkar: the evolution of Indonesia’s Darul Islam movement, 1928-1993

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze

Placement: Head of Global Health analysis - Protection Group International

2019

Daniel Berman

Thesis: Playing the patron: Croatian-American relations and the development of American policy in Yugoslavia: from the collapse of Yugoslavia to Tudjman’s Storm, 1989-1995

Supervisor: Dr Svetozar Rajak

Placement: Research and teaching - Beihang University, China

Bastiaan Bouwman

Thesis: Universal rights in a divided world: the human rights engagement of the World Council of Churches from the 1940s to the 1970s

Supervisor: Professor N. Piers Ludlow

Placement: Assistant Professor of Contemporary European History in a Global Context, Utrecht University

Grace Carrington

Thesis: Non-Sovereign States in the era of Decolonization: Politics, Nationalism, and Assimilation in French and British Caribbean Territories, 1945-80

Supervisor: Professor Joanna Lewis

Placement: Research Fellow at UCL and City University

Anne Irfan

Thesis: Internationalising Palestine: UNRWA and Palestinian Nationalism in the Refugee Camps, 1967-82

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze

Placement: Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Race, Gender and Postcolonial Studies, UCL

William King

Thesis: The British Nerve Agent Debate: Acquisition, Deterrence and Disarmament, 1945-1976

Supervisor: Professor Matthew Jones

Placement: Guest Teacher, LSE; Research Fellow, German Historical Institute London

Pedro Correa Martín-Arroyo

Thesis: Europe's Bottleneck: The Iberian Peninsula and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933-1944

Supervisor: Professor Paul Preston

Placement: Early Career Leverhulme Fellow, Dept History, Royal Holloway University of London

Alex Mayhew

Thesis: Making sense of the Western Front: English infantrymen’s morale and perception of crisis during the Great War

Supervisor: Professor David Stevenson and Dr Heather Jones

Placement: Assistant Professor, Department of International History, LSE

Amal Tarhuni Mezughi

Thesis: The United States, Britain and Qadhafi’s Libya: revisiting the road to confrontation, 1969–1986

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze

Placement: Strathclyde University

Eline van Ommen

Thesis: Sandinistas go global: Nicaragua and Western Europe, 1977-1990

Supervisor: Dr Tanya Harmer and Professor N. Piers Ludlow

Placement: Lecturer in Contemporary History, School of History, University of Leeds

Artemis Photiadou

Thesis: British interrogation culture from war to peace, 1939-1948

Supervisor: Professor Joanna Lewis and Dr Heather Jones (external)

Placement: Assistant Professor, IHD, LSE

2018

Sarah Ashraf

Thesis: Of Military and Militancy: Praetorianism and Islam in Pakistan

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze

Placement: Policy Advisor, UK Civil Service

David Broder

Thesis: Bandiera Rossa: Communists in German-occupied Rome, 1943-44

Supervisor: Professor Vladislav Zubok

Placement: Jacobin’s Europe editor, New Statesman columnist

Daniel Hardegger

Thesis: PhD candidates at the University of Berlin and at Columbia University, New York, from 1871 to 1913

Supervisor: Professor Antony Best

Placement: Research Associate, ZHAW School of Management and Law, Swizerland

Isaac Scarborough

Thesis: The extremes it takes to survive: Tajikistan and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1992

Supervisor: Professor Vladislav Zubok

Placement: Assistant Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies, Institute for History, Leiden University

Max Skjönsberg

Thesis: Internecine Discord: Party, Religion and History in Hanoverian Britain, c.1714-1765

Supervisor: Dr Tim Hochstrasser

Placement: Assistant Professor of Humanities, Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Eudcation, University of Florida

2017

Oliver Elliott

Thesis: The American Press and the Rise of Authoritarianism in South Korea 1945-1954

Supervisor: Professor Steven Casey

Placement: Lecturer, Global Doctoral Program Manager and Head of Research at Geneva Business School

Scott Gilfillan

Thesis: Enclave Empires: Britain, France and the Treaty-Port System in Japan, 1858-1868

Supervisor: Dr Antony Best

Placement: Writer/Editor TUC

Cornelis Heere

Thesis: Japan and the British world, 1904-14

Supervisor: Dr Antony Best

Placement: Lead researcher on the Dutch diplomatic oral history project, Huygens ING (KNAW); historical advisor at The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Paul Horsler

Thesis: Cometh the Hour, cometh the nation: local-Level opinion and defence preparations prior to the Second World War, November 1937 – September 1939

Supervisor: Professor David Stevenson

Placement: Librarian, LSE Library

Serkan Keçeci

Thesis: The grand strategy of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus against its southern rivals (1821-1833)

Supervisor: Professor Dominic Lieven and Dr Antony Best

Placement: Research Assistant, Dept History, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey

Corina Mavrodin

Thesis: A maverick in the making: Romania’s de-Satellization process and the Global Cold War (1953-1963)

Supervisor: Professor N. Piers Ludlow and Professor Odd Arne Westad

Placement: Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations, Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University

Tommaso Milani

Thesis: Les Belles Années du Plan? Hendrik de Man and the Reinvention of Western European Socialism, 1914-36 ca.

Supervisor: Professor N. Piers Ludlow and Professor Heather Jones

Placement: Postdoctoral researcher (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter), the Institut für soziale Bewegungen, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Pete Millwood

Thesis: The Sino-American Bilateral Exchange Program and US Support for China’s Reform and Opening, 1969-1989

Supervisor: Professor Odd Arne Westad

Placement: Lecturer in East Asian History, Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne

Ian Stewart

Thesis: Titans of the early world: celtic ideas and national thought in Britain, Ireland, and France, 1700-1900

Supervisor: Dr Heather Jones and
Dr John Hutchinson

Placement: Early Career Leverhulme Fellow, Dept History, Queen Mary University of London

2016

Vladimir Dobrenko

Thesis: Conspiracy of Peace: The Cold War, the International Peace Movement, and the Soviet Peace Campaign, 1946-1956

Supervisor: Professor Odd Arne Westad

Placement: Associate Professor, Sichuan University

Lim Jin Li

Thesis: New China and its Qiaowu: The Political Economy of Overseas Chinese policy in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1959

Supervisor: Professor Odd Arne Westad

Placement: Partner at QCP Capital: Asia’s leading Digital Asset traders

Vishnu Juwono

Thesis: Berantas Korupsi: a political history of governance reform and anti-corruption initiatives in Indonesia 1945-2014

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze

Placement: Assistant Professor in Public Administration, Faculty of Administrative Science, Universitas Indonesia

Chris Parkes

Thesis: The Welles of loneliness: Sumner Welles and the creation of American foreign policy

Supervisor: Professor Steven Casey

Placement: Senior Lecturer in History Education, Kings College London

Nabila Ramdani

Thesis: The rise of the Egyptian nationalist movement: the case of the 1919 Revolution

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze

Placement: Freelance Journalist, broadcaster

Yu Suzuki

Thesis: Relationship with Distance: Korea, East Asia and the Anglo-Japanese Relationship, 1880-1894

Supervisor: Dr Antony Best

Placement: Post Doc - Kyoto University

2015

Ranj Alaaldin

Thesis: Iraq: the rise of the Shi'a, 1958-1980

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze

Placement: Fellow, Middle East Council on Global Affairs; Director of Crisis Response Council; Senior Consultant, World Bank

Sara Al-Qaiwani

Thesis: Nationalism, revolution and feminism: women in Egypt and Iran from 1880-1980

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze and Dr Taylor Sherman

Placement: Guest Teacher, IHD, London LSE

Rosalind Coffey

Thesis: The British press, British public opinion, and the end of empire in Africa, 1957-60

Supervisor: Dr Joanna Lewis

Placement: Guest Teacher and Post-doctoral researcher, IHD, London LSE

John Collins

Thesis: Regulations and prohibitions: Anglo-American relations and international drug control, 1939-1964

Supervisor: Professor Nigel Ashton

Placement: Guest Teacher , IHD, London LSE; Executive Director, International Drug Policy Unit (IDPU), LSE

Jonas Fossli Gjersø

Thesis: Continuity of moral policy: a reconsideration of British motives for the partition of East Africa in light of anti-slave trade policy and imperial agency, 1878-96

Supervisor: Professor Joanna Lewis

Placement: Post-doctoral Fellow, Dept Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo

Anton Harder

Thesis: Defining independence in Cold War Asia: Sino-Indian relations, 1949-1962

Supervisor: Professor Odd Arne Westad

Placement: Guest Teacher, IHD, LSE

Aaron Rietkerk

Thesis: In pursuit of development: the United Nations, decolonization and development aid, 1949-1961

Supervisor: Professor Nigel Ashton

Placement: Lecturer, Cailfornia State University (Fullerton)

Bastian Matteo Scianna

Thesis: Myths and Memories: The Italian Operations on the Eastern Front (1941–1943) and Their Contested Legacy During the Cold War (completed at the University of Potsdam)

Supervisor: Sönke Neitzel

Placement: Senior Lecturer (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Chair of War Studies, University of Potsdam

Tobias Thiel

Thesis: Citizen revolt for a modern state: Yemen's revolutionary moment, collective memory and conscientious politcs sur la longue duree

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze

Placement: Head of Project, Strengthening Reform Initiatives at Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH

Simon Toner

Thesis: The counter-revolutionary path: South Vietnam, the United States, and the global allure of development, 1968-1973

Supervisor: Professor Odd Arne Westad

Placement: History Lecturer, California State University, Fullerton

Corrin Varady

Thesis: From peacemaking to 'vigorous self-defense': US foreign policy and the multinational force in Lebanon 1982-1984

Supervisor: Dr Kirsten E. Schulze

Placement: CEO/ founder of IDEA Digital Education