The Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship is a co-operation between the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the German Historical Institute London (GHIL), and the Gerda Henkel Professor’s home university. Its purpose is to promote awareness in Britain of German research on the history of the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic, and to stimulate comparative work on German history in a European context. The first professorship was awarded in 2009.

Professor Martina Kessel is the Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor for 2020/2021. She will spend a year researching and teaching at the German Historical Institute London and at the London School of Economics.

Martina Kessel’s research focuses on modern German history since the late 18^th century. Among other issues, she is interested in the interface between cultural and political history, the formation of identities, and the history of violence. Her dissertation discussed British and French policy towards Germany in the years after the Second World War. Her Habilitation thesis analyzed the history of boredom in 19^th-century Germany, highlighting understandings of time and emotion. Her latest monograph discusses laughter and humour between 1914 and 1945 as ways of negotiating notions of Germanness and justifying violence.

After studying history, political science, and American studies in Cologne, Munich, and at the University of Maryland, USA, Martina Kessel received her PhD from the LMU Munich in 1988 and her Habilitation from the FU Berlin in 1998, after which she was appointed Professor of Modern History and Gender History at Bielefeld University. She has been a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto.

Expertise: Modern German and European history, cultural and gender history.