Professor Holger Nehring

Chair in Contemporary European History

History University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Professor Holger Nehring

Contact details

About me

I am a contemporary historian of Europe (including Britain) who believes that all good history is in some shape or form contemporary history. I also work a lot with theories and concepts from the social sciences, especially sociology and International Relations. I do research on two themes: the transnational history of social movements (especially peace movements), the history of the Cold War (in particular the history of military infrastructure), and the ways in which ideas and culture have influenced responses to cultural diplomacy and soft power.

Together with Dr Sam Alberti at National Museums Scotland (PI), I was Co-I on a large project on 'Materialising the Cold War', generously funded by the AHRC (AH/V001078/1). The project analysed museum collections and displays across the UK and Europe - covering everything from military and social history to technology, art and design - to understand how the Cold War materialised in a specific national context and ask exactly how it features in museums today (http://mcw.stir.ac.uk/). It has resulted in a toolkit for museum, a popular book on Cold War Scotland and an edited collection on Cold War Museology.

In 2023, I held a British Academy Innovation Fellowship (together with Wilton Park, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office's executive agency) to work on sub-national diplomacy and regional development in the UK context (https://pare.stir.ac.uk/).

My biography has prepared me for this interdisciplinary journey. I received my training in contemporary history, political science, and philosophy. Before joining Stirling's Division of  History and Politics in September 2013, I was based in various positions at the University of Sheffield. I hold a DPhil from Oxford which I had the pleasure to attend with very generous funding from a Rhodes scholarship.

I have held a number of visiting research fellowships at universities in Europe and north America: at the Forum for Contemporary History, Oslo and the Norwegian Nobel Institute (2007 and 2008); at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Columbus, OH, USA (2009); at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research (2009); at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris (as professeur invité in 2010); at the History Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA (2012); and at CISAC-TEC at Stanford (2019).

I am a historian of post-1945 Western Europe, with special interests in the history of social movements, protests and political activism in Britain and West Germany, the history of violence and peace, the history of sub-national diplomacy as well as Cold Ware museology.

I have also worked on a project that examines the role of infrastructure for NATO in the Cold War, with special respect to the extreme environments in NATO's northern rim ('the High North') as well as transatlantic debates about burden sharing in the alliance.

Together with colleagues in Vienna and Berlin, I used to work on a platform that brings together colleagues working on the history of science diplomacy in the Cold War, and especially the Pugwash movement: https://www.writing-pugwash-histories.org/project-description/

Divisional / Faculty Contribution

Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Other Academic Activities

Co-Convenor, Research Programme in Human Security, Conflict and Co-Operation
https://www.stir.ac.uk/research/hub/tag/104198

Co-Director, Centre for Policy, Conflict and Co-Operation Research
https://www.stir.ac.uk/…erationresearch/

Co-Editor, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14580

Co-Editor, Studies in Civil Society
https://www.berghahnbooks.com/…in-civil-society

Professional membership

Fellow, Higher Education Academy

Fellow, Royal Historical Society

University Contribution

Member of Academic Council

Member of University Court

Research programmes

Research centres/groups

Research themes