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Department of History

Professor Alan Kramer

Professor of European History

Alan Kramer has worked on the era of the First World War, focusing on the analysis of violence, the relationship between armed forces and non-combatants, war crimes, international law, prisoners of war, economic warfare and blockades, and memory, mainly in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, and Italy. In a synthesis of cultural with military, political, social, and economic history, he places the First World War in a longer-term context reaching to the Second World War. Current projects include a monograph entitled Concentration Camps: A Global History; co-editor of 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of World War I (with O. Janz, Berlin, five other general editors, and partners in fifty countries). He is a fellow of the Humboldt Foundation, Germany, and winner of the Research Prize of the Humboldt Foundation, 2015-16.

Select Publications
Books

  • Alan Kramer and Bettina Greiner, eds, Welt der Lager. Zur "Erfolgsgeschichte" einer Institution, Hamburg, 2013
  • Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War, Oxford, 2007; paperback 2008.
  • German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial, London and New Haven, 2001 (with John Horne); (German ed., Hamburg, 2004. French ed., Paris, 2005.)

Articles

  • ‘Blockade and economic warfare’, in Jay Winter, ed., The Cambridge History of the First World War, vol. II: The State, Cambridge, 2014, pp. 460–489.
  • ‘Recent Historiography of the First World War’, , Journal of Modern European History, 12, 2014, part 1, pp. 5-27 and part 2 pp. 155-174.
  • ‘Einleitung’ [Introduction] to Kramer and Greiner, eds, Welt der Lager, 2013, pp. 7-42.
  • ‘Mass Killing and Genocide from 1914 to 1945: Attempting a Comparative Analysis’ in Christian Wiese and Paul Betts (eds.), Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination. Saul Friedländer and the Future of Holocaust Studies, London and New York, 2010, pp. 213-232.
  • ‘Ethnische Säuberungen vom Ersten Weltkrieg zum Nationalsozialismus’, in G. Krumeich, ed., Nationalsozialismus und Erster Weltkrieg, Essen, 2010, pp. 323-345.
  • ‘Combatants and Noncombatants: Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes’ in John Horne (ed.), A Companion to the First World War, Oxford, and Malden, MA, 2010, pp. 188-201.
  • ‘The First World War as cultural trauma’, in R. Bosworth (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Fascism, Oxford, 2009, pp. 32-51.
  • ‘The First World War and German Memory’ in Heather Jones, Jennifer O’Brien, and Christoph Schmidt-Supprian (eds.), Untold War. New Perspectives in First World War Studies, Leiden and Boston, 2008, pp. 385-415.
  • ‘Italienische Kriegsgefangene im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Hermann J.W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum. Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung, Innsbruck, 2006, pp. 247-258.

Teaching and Supervision

My undergraduate teaching ranges through the history of continental Europe since 1870. At level 2 (Senior Freshman) I teach ‘Cataclysm and Renewal: History of Continental Europe 1918 to the Present’, and the Group Projects on ‘War and Imperialism’. My sophister special subjects (levels 3 and 4) are List I: ‘Germany from Revolution to Dictatorship, 1918 to 1939’; List II: ‘The First World War in Germany and Italy’. I contribute to the level 1 (Junior Freshman) course ‘Interpreting History’, and to the M. Phil. in Public History. I have supervised several PhD theses on Europe in the era of the First World War, and I am currently supervising theses on both world wars. I welcome graduate students interested in working on any of the above research fields.

Professor Kramer on the TCD Research Support System

Contact Details

Department of History
Trinity College
Dublin 2.

Telephone: +353 1 896 1411
Fax: +353 1 896 3995
Email: alkramer@tcd.ie