Dr Martin D. Brown
Associate Dean for Research
Associate Professor of International History
Contact:
Email: brownm@richmond.ac.uk
School: School of Communications, Arts & Social Sciences
Research centre: The State Power & Globalisation
About
Dr Brown holds a Ph.D. in International History from the University of Surrey, and a M. A. in central and eastern European studies from the School Of Slavonic and East European Studies (S.S.E.E.S.) at the University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (F.R.Hist.S.), a member of the New Diplomatic History Network and Chatham House.
From September 2018 Dr Brown will be taking up a fixed-term research position at the Centre of Excellence in Intercultural Studies at the University of Tallinn in Estonia. He travelled to Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand , in the summer of 2012 to take up a position as the second Novara visiting scholar.
His last book was a co-edited collection of essays written by distinguished central European historians on the history of Slovakia for Cambridge University Press.
Research interests
The primary focus of Dr Brown’s recent research is European diplomatic history. He is currently studying British foreign policy during the era of Détente leading up to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, as well as the period more generally. He is also interested in international discourses surrounding the forcible removal of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after 1945, film, and the influence of the Cold War on historiography.
Research outputs
Books:
- Slovakia in History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, [Co-editor with Professors Mikuláš Teich (Cambridge) and Dušan Kovác (Bratislava)], Cambridge, 2011.
- Jak se jedná s demokraty. Britské ministerstvo zahranicí a ceskoslovenská emigrace ve Velké Británii, 1939-1945, Pavel Dobrovský – Beta, Prague, 2008.
- Dealing with Democrats. The British Foreign Office’s relations with the Czechoslovak émigrés in Great Britain, 1939-1945, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2006.
Articles:
- Forthcoming: With Dr Angela Romano, ‘Executors or creative deal-makers? The role of the diplomats in the making of the Helsinki CSCE’, in S. B. Snyder & N. Badalassi (eds), Helsinki 40 Years After: International Reordering and Societal Change, 1975-1990, Berghahn Books, New York, 2018.
- ‘The Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile and the Legacy of Population Transfers: An Analysis of the English Language Discourse’, in V. Smetana & K. Geaney (eds.), Exile in London: The Experience of Czechoslovakia and the Other Occupied Nations, 1939-45, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2018, pp. 167-190.
- ‘Stanowisko Foreign Office wobec rzadów i komitetów na uchodzstwie w Wielkiej Brytanii podczas drugiej wojny swiatowej’[ The Foreign Office’s attitude towards the Governments and Committees in Exile in Great Britain during the Second World War], in Radek Zurawski vel Grajewski (ed.), Rzady bez ziemi. Struktury wladzy na uchodzstwie [Governments without Territory. Structures of Power in Exile], Wydawnictwo DiG, Warszawa, 2014, pp. 329-48.
- ‘Je „Transfer” pouhým eufemismem pro „ethickou cistku”?: Koreny pojmu a vývoj anglicky psané debaty o odsunu sudetských Nemcu z Ceskoslovenska’, in Václav Houžvicka (ed.), Odsun Nemcu z Ceskoslovenska 65 let poté , EKR, Brno, 2013, pp. 28-45.
- ‘A very British vision of Détente: The United Kingdom’s foreign policy during the Helsinki process, 1969–1975’, in Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, N. Piers Ludlow and Bernd Rother(eds.), Overcoming the Iron Curtain: Visions of the End of the Cold War in Europe, 1945–1990, Berghahn books,Oxford,pp. 139-56.
- „Desperackie lekarstwo”. Brytyjskie Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Wenzel Jaksch i „kwestia sudetoniemiecka” (pazdziernik 1938 – grudzien 1945)’ [‘“A desperate remedy”: The British Foreign Office, Wenzel Jaksch and the ‘Sudeten German question’, 1938 to 1945’], Przeglad Zachodni [Western Review], vol. 327, no. 2 (2008), 45-70.
- ‘Setting Europe ablaze? : The Special Operations Executive’s (SOE) attempts to foster resistance in Central Europe and its relations with the Czechoslovak Government-in-exile, 1940-1945’, in Martin Rady and Péter László (eds.) Resistance, Rebellion and Revolution in Hungary and Central Europe: Commemorating 1956, UCL SSEES, London, 2008, pp. 145-158.
- ‘A Munich Winter or a Prague Spring? The evolution of British policy towards the Sudeten Germans from October 1938 to September 1939’, in H. H. Hahn (ed.), Hundert Jahre sudetendeutsche Geschichte. Eine völkische Bewegung in drei Staaten, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2007, pp.257-273.
- „Nigdy nie narzekaj, nigdy nie wyjasniaj”. Wplyw Foreign Office na ksztaltowanie stosunków brytyjsko-polsko-czechoslowackich w latach 1939-1945’ [‘ “Never complain, never explain”. The Foreign Office’s influence on the formation of British policy with regard to Anglo-Polish-Czechoslovak relations in exile, 1939-1945’], in P. Blažk, P. Jaworski, L. Kaminski (eds.), Miedzy przymusowa przyjaznia a prawdziwa solidarnoscia: Czesi – Polacy – Slowacy, 1938/39 – 1945 – 1989 , vol. 1 [Between compulsory friendship and true solidarity: Czechs – Poles – Slovaks], Institute of National Memory, Warsaw, 2007, pp. 101-109.
- ‘Forcible population transfers – A flawed legacy or an unavoidable necessity in protracted ethnic conflicts? The case of the Sudeten Germans’, in J. Black (ed.), The Second Wold War, vol. 2, The German War, 1943-1945, Ashcroft, Aldershot, 2007, pp. 377-383.
Academic Blogs /Other publications:
- The missing ‘human dimension’ of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 1975, Diplomaatia [Diplomacy], No. 171, November 2017.
- What History Can’t Tell Us About The Future: Non-Predictions For A Trumpy World History Matters, Department of History, University of Sheffield, 20 January 2017.
- ‘Anthropoid: The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich And The Allure Of War On Film’, History Matters, Department of History, University of Sheffield, 15 November 2016.
- ‘1975 and all that’, History Matters, Department of History, University of Sheffield, 20 June 2016.
- ‘Forty years later, the signing of the Helsinki Final Act continues to have an impact on European security’, London School of Economics EUROBLOG, with Dr Angela Romano, University of Glasgow, 15 August 2015.
- ‘The battle for history: why Europe should resist the temptation to rewrite its own communist past’, LSE EUROBLOG, June 25, 2015.
- ‘Kingsman pokes fun at Bond – but the spy is more powerful than ever’, The Conversation, 29 January 2015.
- ‘Ukraine crisis is nothing like invasions of Czechoslovakia’, The Conversation, 4 April 2014.
- ‘History is too important to be left to politicians’, UCL SSEES Research Blog , July 2013.
