Katherine Lebow

Dr Katherine Lebow is Associate Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford and Tutor in Modern History at Christ Church. She is a specialist in 20th-century Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on Poland, state socialism, and the history of social science and autobiography.

Education:

• BA, Yale University
• MA, Columbia University
• PhD, Columbia University

Her research centers on the social and cultural history of 20th-century Poland, especially everyday life under state socialism, grassroots autobiographical writing, and the development of social science in interwar and postwar Europe. She is currently completing a monograph titled The People Write! Polish Everyman Autobiography from the Great Depression to the Holocaust, which explores working-class and peasant autobiographies as sources for understanding democracy and authoritarianism from below.

Her publications span a wide range of themes including Holocaust testimony, socialist urbanism, youth culture, and gender and citizenship. Her book Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56 (Cornell University Press, 2013) is a landmark study of Poland's "first socialist city."

Teaching:

• Europe Divided, 1914–1989
• The Global Twentieth Century, 1930–2003
• General History IV 1815–1914
• Politics, Culture, and Society in the Cold War
• Revolutions of 1989
• Disciplines of History

Current DPhil Students:

• Paulina Maziarska
• Kate Rebecca Stanton
• Emilia Stuchlik
• Ioana Zamfir

She welcomes prospective graduate students working on 20th-century Central, Eastern, or Southeastern Europe, including those interested in Global or Women's, Gender and Queer History.