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